wisedog

Clark, Tyson and Grimes are locks for me. Blease hasn't been mentioned yet, I've got him on the bench at this stage. Has dropped to 179k and can be selected as a midfielder or forward. I'll wait to see where he fits into Roos' plans.

I thought I'd seen him somewhere, couldn't put my finger on it.

Fortunately we picked up Liam Jurrah instead. Dodged a bullet there...

I just did a bit of digging myself. I watched 'Jack Watts' First Goal' and couldn't help but notice that almost every Demon player featuring in this video is no longer at the club. Time will tell if Watts joins them.

Although according to Mark Thompson, Stephen King was lucky not to break his foot on Jeff White's face. That was an absolutely demoralizing game.

Melbourne are my club and I'll stick by them, but emotionally I've detached myself from it all. (Something I learnt to do in the tanking years.) I simply have no hopes or expectations for the team anymore. The losses don't hurt in the slightest. I won't be getting my hopes up until they give me something to get excited about.

Well clubs don't have much room to move in terms of their 'brand': Their colours, guernseys, nicknames and songs are set in stone and supporters would be horrified if you tried to change any of it. How people perceive a club is really determined by their actions on the field. A business can play the game of smoke a mirrors, but a footy club is exposed every week and has nowhere to hide. 8 years ago, Geelong seemed like an incredibly boring club to me. Their blue and white hoops were a symbol of blandness, now it's a symbol of dominance and I watch all their games with interest. Re-branding would only be relevant in order to attract new supporters to the club, but the fact is, no one will want to support a club playing the way Melbourne is at the moment. (...for what it's worth, I think Melbourne have the best nickname, guernsey and logo in the AFL.)

I think Melbourne was more or less on track in their development after the 2010 season, but we passed a tipping point with the sacking of James McDonald. In 2 years we had lost Whelan, Robertson, Wheatley, Mclean, Bruce, McDonald and Miller. 1000 games of experience out the door. In retrospect, we can see that high draft picks aren't the be all and end all and that simply 'playing the kids' ahead of experienced players won't fast track their development, quite the opposite. We should have identified a core group 4 - 6 players (regardless of age) who best represented the culture of the club and given them the responsibility of educating the next generation of players. Bottom out completely, as Melbourne have done and whatever spirit, culture and morale that previously existed is completely destroyed.

Our KPF recruits from 2001 to 2011: Luke Molan - Pick 9 Aaron Rogers - Pick 26 Brad Miller - Pick 55 Nick Smith - Pick 15 Matthew Bate - Pick 14 Lynden Dunn - Pick 16 Michael Newton - Pick 43 *Ben Holland - Pick 21 Colin Garland - Pick 46 *Paul Johnson - Pick 29 Jack Watts - Pick 1 Lucas Cook - Pick 12 It seems they either became defenders or got delisted... Let's hope young Hogan can buck the trend!

fanfooty.com.au is another one.

If you go to footywire.com, there should be a supercoach profile for each player. Click the year to see a breakdown of scores.

For what it's worth, he apparently scored 165 SC points today. Fantasy Freako ‏@FantasyFreako Full Time Suns v Demons #Supercoach Watts 165, Ablett 138, O'Meara 115, Gillies 111, M. Jones 111, Terlich 106 and Grimes 95.

It's been fantastic to see a coach who's been proactive about addressing the holes in our list. Under Daniher, we had the opposite problem. Great forward line, but our defence was a shambles. We were crying out for quality key defenders but it was never addressed with any real intent. Maybe he was spooked after the Heffernan/Moorcroft failures.

Well it's always a bit of a gamble in that price range... At $297K, Bock is probably the best value, but I think he's going to miss the first few rounds of the year. Thornton is $339K and should do well at GWS. Both are DPP. There's also a few decent mature agers worth considering this year (Goodes, Stevenson, Terlich, Pittard), so you could always play one of them and use the cash to upgrade one of your other players.

Yeah if the forwards weren't such a headache this year, I probably wouldn't be considering Sylvia, but he's a good price so I'll take the punt. I was hoping to see more of him in the pre-season, because if he was played more in the midfield I would have found a place for him. As it is, at $292K he's just too expensive. Only averaged 54 last year.

In the real game, absolutely. But in SC, his season averages are pretty solid. 2009 90.5 2010 88.0 2011 96.3 2012 81.0 (98 from rd 13-23) I agree, you're never really sure what you're going to get from him, but you won't find much better value among the mid-pricers.

I wouldn't write Sylvia off just yet... he averaged 98 in his last 11 games last year after recovering from that spinal injury. At $433K, he's pretty good value. Also thinking of taking a punt on Jack Watts. Finally looks to have a set role in the team and was impressive in the opening NAB games. Bit of a risk given there are plenty of other good options around his price, but Watts has a big upside and is a DPP. Apart from that, Terlich, Viney and Byrnes are the bargains.

Daniher and Cameron re-built the list in the late 90's, finding 10 players who would go on to play 100 games or more. But unfortunately, that feat could not be repeated. We were good enough to play finals in 6 out of 9 years and in 2006 we were the best side in Victoria. (You would all have to admit the future seemed pretty rosy when you saw Mclean demolish St. Kilda in that elimination final). 2007 was ravaged by an unprecedented number of injuries. It accelerated the decline of many older players and exposed just how shallow the list was. Be it a failure of recruitment or player development, there were too few ready to take over from the side Daniher had built 8 years earlier. We’ve paid for it.

Among other things, Whateley said that there was another club (Carlton) whose tactics were very close to if not worse than Melbourne's. He then asked where the AFL investigation into tanking concerns was at this time. Wilson replied 'their heads were in the sand'. Since Wilson then acknowledges this, it's strange that her attack has been solely directed at Melbourne over the past three months.

Yeah, I think he came in for the Sydney test and took some big wickets in the second innings. Those first two matches were probably the most frustrating games of cricket I’ve ever seen. Two extraordinary comebacks by South Africa...

I think it might have been against South Africa in Cape Town, 2009. From memory, the results of the series mirrored South Africa’s tour of Australia the previous year. Both home sides lost the first two tests and won the dead rubber.

I remember they were annoyed when we picked him up ahead of them in 2008.

It's funny, when these games were played and were most relevant, there was none of the outrage we see today. It was as if people understood the position Melbourne was in, and turned a blind eye to what had to be done. In fact, I recall an episode of Footy Classified where Craig Hutchinson openly implored the club to do everything in its power to secure the priority pick. (I don't recall Caroline Wilson referring to those sentiments as "disgusting" at the time.) Now 3 years later and without proper context, some journalists have decided they were outraged after all.

And we thought getting him at pick 26 was a bargain!