mauriesy

Funny how for all the fanfare about Malthouse, at the season break in 2013 Carlton are in exactly the same position on the ladder with the same win-loss ratio as they were under Ratten.

What about Alpacas in Bandanas?

Let's not let a 'D' get in the rode of the theme. Could we get these ladies as the pre-game entertainment? Even Ben-Hur might be happy. I'm thinking that Instead of scarves, we could issue members with red and blue bandanas. And the players could wear them to look like badasses.

Aside from any issues with the FD, coach and the board, I wouldn't trust Jeff Kennett (especially his mouth) as far as I could throw him. How about, for every problem, we stop latching onto the first option that comes up?

I think soon we might have to add No MN$ to the thread title.

Agree. But it was very dramatic. Live coverage of nothing. Even a pic of an empty carpark after Neeld left.

To paraphrase a famous Prime Minister ... "we will decide who coaches the Melbourne Football Club and the conditions under which they are sacked". I'm glad the club has determined the way forward under the guidance of Peter Jackson with a holistic approach to the whole FD, and not given in to the carking of media vultures gathering over a carcase. There are two issues here, one being whether Neeld ought to be sacked, the other 'how we do it if the answer is "yes"'. We should have learnt from Dean Bailey how not to sack a coach. Hopefully we have.

On the contrary, I think we are 3-4 midfield players away from developing something that is at least OK by AFL standards. A good trade for an established midfield player and a good #1 or #2 ND draft pick at the end of 2013, plus some more VFL-type selections like Terlich and Matt Jones, then the same again in 2014 and we'll be immeasurably improved starting in 2015. We have the beginnings in Jones, Viney and Toumpas, and I can see potential in a player like Kent, maybe Evans. We just need a lot more of them. Get the FD organised under Jackson, and we will get a lot better, providing everyone is patient.

He's back! According to the Herald-Sun, 'MELBOURNE has made an almost customary five changes with David Rodan, James Macdonald, Dean Kent and Cameron Pedersen named to play the Hawks'. Round 10 AFL Teams

Slow Bigpond ADSL. Couldn't get on at all between 6pm and 12 last night. Lots of whizzing! Seems fine now.

It's part of the plan to make Demonland the hardest site to play against.

Some of my friends think Cognac is fire-water. It does take a reasonable mouthful to lubricate and get over the volatility before you can really appreciate it.

It's our dekadus horribilis.

I wouldn't take my slow ADSL connection as 'normal' because it suffers local exchange congestion in the evenings (I get 3Mbps at 9am and 0.5Mbps at 9pm!). However, I can get onto Demonland at all time without problems other than a minor delay. The last two nights though it's been awful. I do notice a difference between when there's 200 users and 700 users (it's not bad now for instance). BTW, my FlagFox add-on for Firefox says the Demonland server is in Japan. Is that right? (It's been known to be wrong.)

Cognac. Might as well go out in style.

You know exactly what the conversation was, do you?

Apart from Matthews and Roos, that's a depressing list to pick from.

It's OK now, but I'll wait until evening when everybody gets on line and the little whizzy wait symbols start endlessly whizzing.

The current problems started sometime around 2003. That was the beginning of a player selection and drafting program by two inept recruiters that saw us get nearly twenty first-round draft picks over a decade, only to end up with the "worst midfield in the history of the AFL" . Over 50% of our first-round picks were used on talls in the search for the mythical but outdated 'spine'. A lot of the rest were used on players without strength, guts and leadership. We ended up with a midfield consisting of Nathan Jones. Neeld is not the sole cause of our problems. You'd have to be naive to think that sacking him will magically fix them. It's a problem ten years in the making, and will take at least five years of early draft picks to correct (hopefully Viney and Toumpas are beginning of a midfield resurrection). Neeld may also not be the solution to the problems, but that's a different issue.

Bring in youth? Apart from a few, the whole team is 'youth'.

#1: Hill, Hartlett or Rich. #17, 19: Ballantyne, Zaharakis or Redden. But, hey, it's done and dusted now.

The only thing that Robinson brings to a football team is kamikaze application and a punchable head. He is among the most wasteful users of the football I've ever seen. We can surely do better than that.

When are we going to get out of this mentality that a 'star' will save us? Only one thing will save us and that's an AFL quality midfield. Here's my view on the whole issue of recruiting. In my mind it's far more important than changing the board, or the coach, or re-organising the football department. Don't get me wrong, these things need to be attended to and quickly, but the team itself is now a basket case and a long-term rehabilitation proposition. The old Daniher-style idea that you needed a ‘premiership winning spine’, including a star forward, to be successful to me is out of date. I think it’s led Melbourne to concentrate far too much on the holy grail of Carey-like elite talls as the basis of team success. This idea has been disastrous as far back as Tilbrook. The midfield is the absolute ‘engine room’ of any AFL team. It’s where you win contested ball, make clearances, defend when you don't have the ball, ‘run and carry’ when you do, and actually score more than half your goals. Teams today are effectively one or two ruckmen, a couple of tall backs, a couple of tall forwards and 16 midfielders. That’s what the undefeated Geelong was last week: West/Blicavs, Taylor/Lonergan, Hawkins/Podsiadly, and 15-16 players who can play as midfielders, some in the back half, some in the forward line, and most everywhere. Since 2003, Melbourne has had 19 draft picks in the top 20 (all drafts). Of those 19 picks, they’ve chosen talls (190cm+) over 50% of the time (with some of the rest being small backs). The only true, hard-at-it midfielders they’ve selected with early picks have been McLean (gone), Jones and this year Viney. A lot of the other 'midfielders' have been 'project players (e.g. Morton, Gysberts) who just aren't tough enough. Melbourne has generally selected talls with early picks and midfielders with late picks, when I believe it should have been the other way around. What did Geelong pay at the drafting table for Lonergan, Taylor, Podsiadly and Hawkins? Apart from determining the true value of Hawkins as a father-son, you could quite easily argue they paid far less overall than we did for Frawley, Garland, Clark, Dawes and Hogan. Between 2003 and 2007 Melbourne had 20 National Draft picks in total. Fifteen are no longer at the club. That’s a terrible retention rate and it’s not all lack of ‘development’ (remember that up to 2006 Melbourne fairly regularly played finals with established leaders like Neitz and Macdonald). Many selections have just been extremely poor picks. We just have to realise this as a fact and cease the pointless arguments about development and trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. You maximise your chance of an elite midfielder the earlier the draft pick. It’s also why Melbourne now lacks leaders with a couple of hundred games experience. While they obviously didn’t work in isolation, Craig Cameron and Barry Prendergast ought to be called to account for their role in Melbourne’s downfall ... except they don’t work for Melbourne any more. So the drafting disaster has led to Melbourne playing the Gold Coast Suns with a cobbled together midfield of Jones and Sylvia plus a quality but inexperienced player like Viney (6 games). The rest were mainly players who are either late draft picks or elevated rookies: Bail (#64, 41 games), Mackenzie (Rookie, 61 games), Kent (#48, 2 games), Matt Jones (#52, 6 games), Nicholson (Rookie, 24 games), Evans (Rookie, 9 games), Terlich (#68, 6 games). The rucks were Spencer (Rookie, 18 games) and Gawn (#34, 8 games). How can you possibly expect that inexperienced midfield to compete? It’s Mark Neeld’s biggest nightmare and not all of his making. In regard to getting out of this mess, I can’t see how it can be done other than to draft purely for midfielders in the next 2-3 drafts with every pick we get. I tend to think we actually drafted quite reasonably for our midfield in the 2012 ND, with Viney and Toumpas as quality mids, then Kent, Matt Jones and Terlich as later low-cost picks. At the moment they’re just very inexperienced. It's a start, but we need 3-4 years more of it. Please, please, no reliance on trading good picks for stars like Franklin. Let's get midfielders, midfielders and midfielders, either by selection, trade or speculative late picks. If we use our first pick on a star forward in the 2013 draft I'll slash my wrists.

I don't want to throw 'massive dollars' at another tall. Let me know when Selwood is out of contract and we can throw 'massive dollars' at someone who will actually fix our 'massive' midfield problem.

No, you should blame everybody except for the player.