sue

the club has to carefully consider what to say, if anything, unlike us posters. It is a mistake to respond instantly every time the media says jump.

What if a number of people at this alleged meeting have a completely different view of what was discussed and decided than the others. What then?

I was arguing that it was not like an alleged murderer making that claim, though i used the case of the speeding motorist. You might disagree with my reasoning, but to just ignore it is a bit odd.

I agree. I was just pointing out that the 'other clubs do it' defence was not unusable as some had argued. I just hope the media howling would indeed happen. It's not too paranoid to fear it might not if some other bright flashing object got their attention.

Sorry if this is repeating what has already been said -too many pages to read. But I note that some have said that we can't use as a defence the fact that other clubs should also be investigated. They use the analogy of getting caught speeding etc. But there is a difference. MFC is in competition with other clubs under the AFL's system. My bush lawyer instincts suggest that we would have cause to claim we were being unfairly disadvantaged if they failed to investigate other clubs.

If you are negative all the time, you will be right some of the time. Whoopee.

Then it's interesting that he hasn't been de-listed at this time.

The pro and con arguments are going around in familiar circles. How about starting a poll so we can see how many support each position? With a simple question like "As a result of the trades, is the MFC now in a better position to be a successful club over the coming years?"

Yes, quite clearly he didn't like those who have gone. Presumably he likes most of those who are left or we will do this all again next year. I'm amazed that so many members of this forum think they know more about a player's value than a bunch of NEW professionals (whose careers depend on getting things right) when they dispense with players chosen by the OLD professionals who clearly got it wrong. Did we do so well in 2011/12 with the list we had?

You could ask the same question 20 times over for every good player snapped up by another club - geez we'd had him if only we'd....You can't do them all. Only time will tell how well we've done. But looks OK to me for the moment - a mixture of youth and experience to help them (and the others who have shown real promise) to develop properly.

Some posters would be upset if we delisted a number 4 pick even after he decided he wasn't interested in footy anymore but wanted to take up basket weaving. It's fine to discuss whether a play needs more time etc, but if we bungled in the past by making bad high draft picks, it is not wise to continue with the mistakes.

Like almost everyone else on this site, I have no idea if this swap is good or bad. The only evidence I have is that Gys failed to get into a D-grade side desperate for players in his role, whereas Pederson couldn't break into a better team where his role was covered by better players. On that basis (and leaving aside the question of what roles we need which I guess the FD knows more than me), the swap sounds like a win.

If it was the same crew as before then your comment would make some sense. But it is a new crew. We won't know if they are good or bad till we see what happens over the coming seasons. Why do you always seem to assume the worst?

We've got a new regime making the decisions. Let's assume a group of professionals know what they are doing until it's proven otherwise. After all, their future depends on them getting things right (unlike us posters).

This should generate a few comments during a dull weekend. http://www.afl.com.a...06/default.aspx

Of course things may turn out well or not. But given where MFC is at, I'm a lot more happy with where were are now than I would have been with a batch of young untried kids recruited on the basis of potential. Imagine the doom and gloom our pessimists could produce if we just took a lot of high picks as was done so 'successfully' in the past.

I agree. Older demon trots out the usual grump about us not being the "toughest team to play against". Some posters seem to think he meant by round 1 2012. When we are the toughest team to play against we'll probably win the flag.

all true, but that doesn't mean it is more enjoyable to watch necessarily.

well done - takes a pedant to spot a pendant

I'm shocked - none of you (other) pendants has spotted the misuse of the apostrophe in "it's" in post 45.

Sorry, don't agree YDE. If you have read any of my posts, you will see that I am over optimistic and positive - except about some other posters . But I doubt we'd hear anything at this stage (unless it was totally catastrophic). In the meantime I just hope and assume all is well.

I'm not convinced that any significant harm was done by the quotes in the articles you posted earlier. Neeld didn't say anything that the rest of the professional footy community didn't know. In fact you could claim that it is a better negotiating position with the AFL to cut the usual spin and just call a spade a spade and cut to the chase (I'm running out of cliches...)

I will look forward to how some posters will find negative things to say on the day we finally win the flag. Let's have a competition on guessing what they'll say. For example: Once again none of our players won the Norm Smith. The FD has some questions to answer.

Sorry, I might be sloppy in not referencing every one of your posts accurately, but I did fairly sum up your argument and point out the flaw in it. Please tell me why we wouldn't collect as much data as we could even if we didn't have enough resources to analyze it week to week? Keeping data for later analysis when time permits is cheap. Also even if we didn't have resources to analyse every player in detail every week, a player with a problem might stand out without the need for a detailed analysis. I think the defense of Llyod must be reduced to ' it is too much effort for the players to put them on every time'. I hope that wouldn't be the case. Glad to hear you don't feel the need to defend Llyod. I just think your interpretation is wrong. No big deal. I agree there is a 'resource divide issue' but I have a need to dish Llyod. Can't think why.....

There is a future for you as a spin doctor. So the interpretation now is that we have enough GPS units but are not using them.. Odd thing for Llyod to mean in an article which talks about clubs being under resourced. So for your interpretation to hold water, he must have meant lack of money to employ people to analyse the data. But It is hard to believe the club would not collect every bit of data it could even if it did not have the resources to analyse it week by week. Disk space is cheap, and one can always do a bit more analysis when time permits. So your defence of Llyod is extremely weak. BTW I don't think he is kicking us while we are down. I think he is a poor journo just looking to jump on the 'resource divide' bandwagon to fill up his copy. I don't deny the divide is reall -quite the contrary.