mauriesy

Terrific stuff and a great report WJ. Good to see The Age covered it. Sorry to have not made the night, but pleased to have contributed to the guernsey fund. What other things can we do as supporter sites to build the relationship with footy communities like Yuendemu? An annual fundraiser for the footy club? Support for the Long Journey scholarship? The next Demonland/Demonology supporter match played there?

http://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/newsart...03/default.aspx

I'm not interested in "causes". If Newton plays consistently well enough at Casey to warrant selection, then he gets selected. If he plays for Melbourne and fails to do the team thing, doesn't kick goals and provide forward defensive pressure, then he goes back to Casey. That's all there is to it.

Jeez, he's not that good. Carlton didn't give up that much for Judd.

Don't get too carried away with Saturday's win. The only match where we start favourite will be Fremantle.

There's one flaw in your fantasy ... the first six words.

Maybe someone should 'heavy' the club to give some of the $3100 'profit' back to the Yuendemu community? I doubt they originally expected to get that much for the guernsey.

$100. DN123048. Great work everyone.

We should all study the coaching careers of Mark Thompson and Alistair Clarkson for a bit of education. Both lacked supporter confidence in the first couple of years of their appointments, because their sides were losing while trying to build the list and develop the football basics. There were more than a few calls for their sacking.

Sounds like his frontal lobe is finally developing.

The pointers are there at least. This story appeared this afternoon on the Melbournefc website, and Peter German said: "Jack had 22 touches and was steady again. He used the ball well and he played mainly up the ground. He was No. 1 with our inside 50 kicks for the game. It was a reasonable game and he's starting to show some good consistent form". With these other reports: Liam Jurrah – Liam was very good. He was back in the senior side – he tackled and pressured really well – and finished it off with three goals. He moved up the ground as the game went on and played with a bit more freedom. He took a step forward and it was really pleasing. Kicks 10, Handballs 7, Marks 5, Tackles 6, Goals 3 Michael Newton – He was very good and produced another consistent performance. Again, a couple of shots on goal when astray – that's a part of his game he's got to get right – but the way he is going about his footy at the moment and over the past five weeks has been outstanding. His defensive and offensive work has been very good. Kicks 14, Handballs 5, Marks 9, Tackles 5, Goals 3 Russell Robertson – His whole game was good, but he could've been very good, because he kicked 3.5 and took 12 marks. He chased and tackled and did all of the things we asked him to do – he was very good at that. But he could've kicked seven or eight goals and that was the only area of his game that let him down. Kicks 12, Marks 12, Goals 3 I'd expect something to be done in the very near future to bolster a very ordinary, low-scoring attack.

Quite obviously they should be called the Gunns, as they seem to run the rest of Tasmania.

The one thing Pavlich would bring would be an attitude to the ball that was hard, and he'd supply us with an instant power forward who could kick goals, or be a tall influence on any part of the ground. He'd teach our young forwards how to play. That might be more valuable than a somewhat plodding inside mid, no matter how loyal, tough and dedicated. However, it's short term and I hope you noticed that my operative word was might. In reality I doubt I'd pay such a high price, even for Pavlich.

They'd think it was just a bunch of loungeroom legends living out their fantasies and wouldn't take any of it seriously. But I bet they've been warned off ever reading any fan sites.

"Trade McLean for what" is the question. If the trade was to, say, another club for pick #13, I'd say no. He's worth more to us than just a pick in terms of leadership and endeavour. However, if the trade was, say, to another club for #13 which we could then on-trade with #3 to Fremantle for Pavlich, I might consider it more closely.

Shouldn't that be 3- ?

I made an effort to go to the last Sunday twilight game when we played Adelaide. By the time I drive to the local station, catch the train, then walk/tram/train from Southern Cross to the 'G, it takes me nearly two hours. Then I froze my socks off, saw a totally lacklustre game, and by the time we had something to eat on the way back, got home well after 10.00pm. This time I didn't go. Sunday evening is a stupid time to hold a game and these twilight games are a sure-fire way of keeping me away.

Martin's body is the same size as Jamar and PJ's. They're all 100kg. I'd suggest it wasn't a 'bigger body', just lack of ruck skill.

Don't let the socks-down skinny look of Fletcher fool you. He is the same height and weight as Mark Jamar ... 198cm and 100kg.

Typical AFL/Telstra, they don't code it so it opens in all browsers ... it will open in IE and Safari, but not in Firefox or Google Chrome. It's just a Lightbox applet, you'd think they could fix it.

It says something about our list when a 22-year-old who has played 9 games is perceived as "old and battle-hardened".

Maybe the whole back six is not playing this time, and five aren't even at the club?

So The Age reports that the difference between the best stadium deal (West Coast's) and the worst stadium deal (Melbourne's) is $11.1 million (based on net returns). That's an awful lot of money ... think what we could do with it! West Coast's total attendance at home games in 2008 was 414,188, while Melbourne's was 338,551. West Coast got a better net return from their average home game attendance of 37,653 than the three highest Victorian clubs: Collingwood (59,213 ave), Carlton (48,589 ave) and Essendon (46,336 ave).

Fact ... if you're asking for my opinion. Ward would continually break lines and run into space, only to undo his good work by a misplaced kick, or worse, one straight to the opposition. Turnover king.

Regardless, to see a guy take a slow run and bounce out of defence, totally unaware he was about to get tackled from behind and turn it over 'holding the ball', is not the hallmark of a top-line midfielder. And it's not the first time. He might have a top midfielder's engine, but he is slow. At present he is no better than a player like O'Bree who has scorn poured on him for being like treacle.