beelzebub

OK..The Coach has gone... Long live the Coach. Now many of us have surmised and postulated that some players seemed to get an extraordinary run. Now that ND is moving on and a new think tank looms, who will be getting just a tad edgy about their longevity in the Red and Blue ? Clint BIZZELL Ben HOLLAND Brad MILLER Daniel WARD Nathan BROWN Simon GODFREY Byron PICKETT Ryan FERGUSON Mark JAMAR Nathan CARROLL all out of contract this year.. ( more are but I'll assume the likes of Neeta and Junior, Sylvia Robbo and Rivers to be safe ) Im not talking trade per se....as thats on other threads. Just who may not even get much of an offer ? Now Carroll will in all likley hood obvoiusly stay, but I couldnt bring myself to put him immediately on the safe list as Im still not 100% convinced he's our best option there. But we'll put him on the tradeable list for now, so too probably Miller and Russian. Now my understanding is we can only force 6 changes...but if delistings fall into our lap then thats a bonus ? ( yes/no ? ) Should the rest be worried ?

Id agree Distance...he's not scaremongering...just making an observation.. areasonably valid one I would say again. Youre dead right in noting that it can change with suitbale drafting and that will have to happen. with the relatively limited life span ( on averae) of AFLplayers yo ureally need the next batch in the wings as the new kids take to the track to replace the aging . Draft/trade week is really important this year

whether they are in your starting 22 or not is somewhat irrelevant to the point being made. And strangely enough Id listen to Robbie Flower before most here. The problem is they are on the list. They are drawing pay, and they limit what you can do in as much as only so many can be delisted per year. yes some will simply fall off the cliff but what he says is pretty well the case no matter which way you want to paint it. despite claims that only so may are key players... look who has been playing this year Neitz 32, Bizzell 31, Brown 30, McDonald 30, White 30 , Holland 30, Ward, Pickett , Yze..all 29 Id say Flower was pretty well on the money

appearances can be deceptive...lol.. but cheers. look..its a shame it had to happen to a nice bloke. To paraphrase one P.Keating..'its the redundancy we had to have !!"

If Neale decides friday is it i think thats a perfectly Ok thing. He is surely entitled to think and do whats best for the Daniher clan now. He has earnt that.

ok.. It has to be positive as it takes away any uncertainty over the position, we now know its vacant. This has many flow on effects. The football dept now knows there are winds of change about to blow through The players will now know also that all best are off. That as part of the review they too are on the block,,,to be scrutinised for suitability etc. The supporters now know that somethng proactive has taken place and that the MFC arent really in the busines any more of tolerating mediocre perrformances...by anyone. Any building takes it cue from the preparation of the site. To put it bluntly some demolition has taken place. Th erubble wil lbe cleared by seasons end. Foundation go down immediately in the form of new personel. Building starts with the drafts . The rest of football world know that MFC is no longer a club of complacency. Trauma has happened but he club is firm. when was the last time that happened at Melbourne ? ( almsot a trick question ) . Its good from a timing position also. We have the jump on all other clubs re coaches now. surely thats good. Further to the players position:... th ekids will know that barring death they will at least get a chance, maybe only one this season, but a chance at least. The counter to this is that teh seasoned and dare i say it some of the complacent ones will have to intepret this as writing on the wall for them too. perform or perish !! The team will arise to a rude awakening....some will grasp that as a new opportunity, some will wilt and fall by the wayside. A healthy bush needs pruning. we can start earlier than most....again surely a positive. Another positive...and its only my feelings here. We will see some very different playing over the next weeks; and thats got to be better than much of the crap so far this year .

Keep in mind...neither Gardner nor anyone else at Melbourne preciptated Neales Departure, he's managed it al by himself with less than illustrious results. He dug his own grave. Wether a grave or a building top.. he got here by his own accord. Given that the want of many clubs is simply to slip the unwittinng victim a DCM and shut the door, Neale's been given the opportunity to keep his pride intact. Yes, there's a corpse, but there's no bloody mess to go with it; there could have been . we'll just have to agree we view it differently

like any marraige...or rather divorce a clean break is often for the best. Am happy for him to do either. Now what is tantalisingly seductive as it is tempting is the idea of Williams standing in !!

He didnt say he'd wait til the end of the season. he said they would wait til the season was effectively over, and it is. If he and his board hadnt moved on these events then many would be asking why ?? How did they backdoor him.. they didnt sack him.. They simply annoiunced everything was up for review...including his job and maybe he'd like to present a case for it to continue past his current contract. Its Danihers decision not to enter into that procedure, not the MFC's decision not to allow him to. All things considered I thought it ws handled most magnaminously. It could have been a bllod bath. It wasnt. "To me the season is not over until round 22,i think daniher should have been given the opprtunity to leave the club with pride" Therin lays for you the dilema. The board disagree with your intepretation. They win !!. and he was given the chance to leave with dignity...hasnt he ? No matter how you wrap it up he was always going to leave the club as being unsuccessful. This way everyone can get on with things post haste. I admire Danners for his composure in this. Its a credit to him as a man of intergity. But he will have known full well once the wheels started falling off of this season that his tenure was dicey at best, and limited at worst. If Danners had been so silly as to ask whether he had a job here at the end of the year , with full knowledge that a review of some sort would occur ( even before it was announced ) that gardner wouldnt have been in any position to say Yeah or Naye anyway !! How could he until all things had been looked into. The business world has some tough and unforgiving procedures. Danners is street smart. He's also resilient. he knew how the game is played and I think he's done remarkably well. The club ...and the game is bigger than one man, and so it should be. I accept you think it isnt fair.

they reckon a week's along time in Politics. a cuppla days seems an eternity in Footy !! lol. I dount anyon eis going anywhere until the review is finished.. but hey... none of us seriously expected the events of today ..to happen today :-)...so who knows !!

How has his commenting on the coach changed..It really hasnt. He has all the while said there would be a review. He never to my knowledge bagged the coach or put him on notice. He never even did the good ol' public..."the coach has our 100% suport etc. He has said all things wil be looked at. Imsure he emmitted positives when dealing with the players. Do you know if he categorically told any of them... " look its ok...no ones under review, no ones position is imminently combustable " . He has probably told them much the same as he espouses in his letters to memebers and ramblings on the website that things are going forward etc etc etc.. There was going to be a review. There is a review. It would occur when it was all over red rover for the season...and lo and behold...its all over. What the board ( and by association PG ) has said and intimated hasnt changed one iota. What has chnaged is teh timetable due to events that they were unable to predict. Indeed events they had been told unlikley by the Coach at the beginning of he year. But if you see this as erratic....fair enough.. we will differ.. thats fair enough too :-)

erratic ? whats been erratic. if anything I see it as purpose driven. please keep in kind the media will never show you the whole picture and often what is reported are no more than long sound grabs. I personally didnt car emuch for the comment re the supporters but other that that he's said and done what you d expect a person in authority to do. Other clubs have had ( well even we have in past ) officials who are only to happy to do strange things. What we have here is a board that had a task at hand. Thye had to appraise things at the beginning of the year on the basis of interacction with the football dept and other intereted concerns. From this they formed a path forward with deteminable and measurable outcomes. Then ..... then we have a series of unfortunate events , whose totality even Snickett would be salivating over. As a result we have a forced re-evaluation of the staus quo. The board has taken a rather pragmatic things are better to happen sooner rather than later approach. They planned for change and change has resulted. Arguably the timetable is going to catch a few off guard and some fastish thinking on feet will be occurring probably at the present at the MFC. Only a foolish board/group/company would continue down a predeterminded track even when the track and all the signage has changed on them. Erratic ? well open to hear evidence

might prove a very prothetic evaluation !! :-)

Keep in mind..Gardner and Co havent had a real crack at organising the football dept yet.. a little tinkering perhaps. But his is their first full on effort. Im quite hapy to see what they will do.. Just because they arent doing it in a hysterical , headless chook manner doesnt mean they arent doing stuff. I mean.. do you really expect a call from Paul ? ....neither do I !!

i see some interestig ideas of whom is tradable here. Unfortunately some ideas fly directly in the face of logic. You are higly unlikely to get much if indeed anything for players who are long in the tooth and /or especialy if they are now exhibiting a proneness to injuries etc. I would have happily traded Ooze but he wont get a zack now.. Brown is on his last doggy legs.. Hollywood is on teh wrong side of 30 ..will be 31 tomorrow..happy bday..best day to have one :-)) Same for dutchy. I very much dount Godders would continue on in AFL if not at melbourne , but the has a ready made life( for a few years) at Zebby land.. The point im trying to make is its not who you may want to get rid of..its ...what can they offer anyone ? And if we dont value some of these guys anymore...what makes anyone think someone else will ? Players who are tradable are the Millers, the Bruces , the Johnstones, jamars, Jonhsons ( both ) the bells green etc.. In this vein... Sylvia is tradeable.. Beamer isnt.. this isnt about who I particularly want to trade...just an observation on who you COULD trade.

who ? The people we elected to the club will do for me. From what Ive heard Gardner and his minions will seek the objective input of those they consider knowledgable and insightful in this regard. that sounds like a plan to me.. a pretty fair one too. I dont want anyone like Healy or Thomas near this procedure. If Sheahan wants to input then he can run for board. So far the people in charge seem have shown they know how to orchestrate things and have equitted themselves quite well ( save a few needless comments by PG ). We wanted things to happen... well they are happening. Im happy to let them continue.

Gary Ayres is mentally weak.,. he wussed it big time.. ran like a kid!!

food for thought.. a certain hawthorn player retires in 1985 he takes up coaching in 1986 he has a premiership in 1990. further to this curiousness...a team he coaches now had a captain retire last year... and is in offing for coaching next year. Both players were part of chamoionship and premiership teams. Both players had no prior coaching experience !! I'm really starting to wonder about all this experience as coach ? Is it simply more to do with the character and ability of the person, his thoroughnes, attention to the task at hand ? I must admit not too many of the other choices get me particularly excited. I have a funny feeling this will all occur quicker than any suspect... ..... and then all the conspiracy folk can go ballistic :-))

just as another perspective If Voss was to go to a club with lots and lots of moola... with all the facilities on earth and possibly a different list to ours ( I think I said that safely!! lol )..then might it not be incumbent upon him to really perform from day one ? A club like Melbourne, on the verge of a renaiscance, a club definitely looking forward, with exciting things happening , but at the same time...no immediate expectations,; then might it not posibly really appeal to an ego to be part and cause of a terrific era being born. He's going to get decent money where ever he goes...remember ND wasnt on peanuts !! I dunno... still undecided on the bloke.. but happy if he comes. how does it go.. if he comes...we will build it ?? ....lol :-))

Im talking the bigger picture...not just us !!

As an aside.. and posssibly its for a new thread... We as a club are verging on a new era. I truly sense it. New 'thinking' new premises.. etc. and next year ..a New Coach. Some of the older guard of players are going ( or will ) .. Change is upon us !! Do we take a somehwat maverick step and possibly solve one of the problems in modern day coachiing. We all acknowledge ND was good with his men. He had a good raport etc. But tactically ...well things werent successful. Do we create a new attack on this and separate the roles. Have a Manager who looks after the bigger picture. The bringing on , development etc .. all currently within the scope of AFL coach. But the role of tactician, and game coach is another person ? CArlton sort of trialed this but possibly had the wrong mix of personel. The game has moved on..is it time to address the role of coach as well ??

yes...thats the next interesting aspect isnt it... If there was any complacency then the players with any nouse wll know its all about to change. And on that note does this now also make sense for possibly Neeta to hand over to ..Brocky ( or whomever )

might be a very good bet. Has stayed under the radar really. Highly rated at Deeland

One of the more curious, entertaining and fascinating spectacles is the occasional circus called the Coaching Merry Go Round. In past years not a lot has happened but this year , especially with the fresh announcement that N D will leave the Dees at the end of this year, the scene is primed for an un abashed frenzy of speculation regarding 2008 appointments. Its probably been a while since we have the occasion of so many coaching position up for grabs and more than sufficent people to fill them , both old, known and totally fresh to the list. I fully expect Neales announcement today to start a domino effect.. much of it behind closed doors. well lets the games commence

Rhino..its been quite weird really...as I dont think anyone ( well with a modicum of civility and intelligence ) actually hates the bloke. That in itself has always been the dillema and a cause for much appraisal being probably not as realistic and concise as it might have been. He's a nice bloke... probably over 90% here would concur. I ts , to me his coachng style and results that are the question. But youre probably spot on.. there will now be a lot of .. good lucks etc.. all thoroughly deserved. Its a harsh environment , sports coaching and management . But it IS results driven...and we simply dont have them !!