Nasher

The reason people assume they didn't know is because a) that's what Essendon said (yeah, I know) and b) it seems implausible that 34 (or more) players would knowingly and willingly be injected with a banned substance. Surely with a group that large, someone's conscience is going to kick in at some point.

That hasn't been contended by any of the people I've been having this debate with. If that's the case then I've been arguing against the wrong point. dc?

They would go back in to the pool, presumably. Probably as delisted free agents? Essendon certainly shouldn't get any rights over them. Wouldn't it be bloody typical if Essendon unearthed a star out of their topups?

I can understand a stance of principles Choke, though I don't think it's quite as black and white as "drug cheat". DC et al seem to me to think it's the one year ban that makes a difference. I can't understand that at all.

My answer is a non-commital "I dunno". It sucks, no doubt, but he still has a truckload of time to redeem himself. If we were talking a life ban I might see your point. Ask yourself this: if Melksham has a spectacular 2017 and 2018 for the MFC, was the decision to trade still a bad one? How about if we did the trade at the end of 2016 or 2017 (ie after the ban is served)? Assuming we paid the same price, would that be better? If so, why?

Nobody will be paying him this year.

Okay. Your position is that because the player is going to miss one season out of the four he is contracted for, and for no other reason whatsoever, the entire decision to trade him in was bad. Is that correct? A yes or no will do. Edit: I'm not trying to be a tool here in case it comes across that way. Your position just makes no logical sense to me and I am trying to flesh it out.

It's already down the drain by the sounds of it.

In that case, we might as well just delist him now if we've already decided the whole trade is a bust.

I had this exact example lined up and ready to go in a previous post but left it out in the end. Obviously the club saw the reward as being worth the risks. No different here.

Again, I think you can only conclusively call the trade a mistake if you look at the first year of his contract in isolation and discount all the possibilities for years 2, 3, 4 and beyond.

The fact that the bulk of your post focuses on whether Melksham is that good a player or not really just enforces my point that the suspension is immaterial to the value of the trade. If Melksham turns out to be a bust, we'll bemoan the poor trade for years, but if he turns out to be a gun in years 2, 3 and 4 and beyond, we'll all be slapping ourselves on the back for it. Both these outcomes and everything in between are independent of his one season suspension, which is why I see it as little more than a 1%er in the total value of the trade. At the end of 2019 when he's out of contract and we're looking back, we will barely remember that this even happened, given that there would have been 3 footy seasons in between.

I can't see how Essendon could possibly be allowed to conduct a season with only 32 on their list. You can take the "you cheated, tough luck" but the main recipients of that punishment would be the innocent players of marginal fitness who have to slog through the season because there's no backup. It's a major, unacceptable health risk to players who did nothing wrong. Essendon will rightly be allowed to top up. I suspect in the interest of fairness, the other clubs including us should be able to as well. It's no big deal, they're going to stink anyway.

They probably just took the view that even if he got rubbed out, it would be worth it. One year in the context of a whole career is almost immaterial; he'll come back at the ripe old age of 25 and have another 5+ years. It's really not that different to drafting a player who does his knee on day 1, although for this he can return fit and with no risk of reoccurrence. I really don't see the big deal.

For three seasons of Melksham 2017 onwards, and then some hopefully. Practically speaking it's not that different to if he'd done his knee on day 1. He's a long term investment and losing a year isn't a huge deal in the scheme. Look, I am disappointed and a bit annoyed, but for me it is far outweighed by the relief that justice has been served. They simply can't have been allowed to get away with this.

Yep.

That doesn't work for me at all. All the text goes from the quotes, but the quote boxes remain. Doesn't matter how many times I try. The only thing that works is the backspace trick you described before. I can also hit the 'source' button on the top-left and delete everything in there, but I think that's only an option for admin level accounts.

There would have to be some provision for this I'd hope. Perhaps give the foundation clubs the ability to "zone" a certain number of players (say, up to 5) - we'd then take Daisy and whoever else. It would be stupid and unfair if we lost her after all the effort we've gone to in order to promote her as part of the club brand.

The difficulty in deleting quotes is definitely and without a doubt a bug. It's 100% reproduceable for me under Chrome - happens every single time - and quite annoying. The auto-retaining of posts in general is a feature, and a handy one.

Nup.

I think anyone with anything sensible or constructive to say has now said it.

It's not really logic, it's just being a grinch. We can all do without the reminder of the previous false dawns.

The words weren't used explicitly, but if that wasn't the point of Curry, WYL et al then I apologise. I certainly can't find any other meaningful point to their comments.

That's very sad. As a society, we should be very sensitive to casual violence. That's more or less the essence of this whole topic, really.

I don't think that's been asserted by anyone. I can only speak for myself of course, but all I have tried to do is highlight why a threat of violence isn't something that should just be shrugged off, trivialised or excused.