sue

Living in NSW I get to see the GWS game every damn week and I have no doubt if Scully was no. 4 at GWS, it is reasonable to expect Demon players will fill the first 3 place getters in the Brownlow. (I must admit my main interest in watching those boring matches is to see Scully get smashed one way or another. Turns out it was always one way so I don't have to feel guilty about wishing physical harm on him.)

But if you always predict doom and gloom you will be right some of the time, and sadly at the MFC a lot of the time.

Thanks PaulRB. I know players move by trade, but do the traded players have a contract with their original club, or the certainty of being offered one? I've assumed they do. And hence given the very public Adelaide move, Jurrah couldn't help the MFC to a trade since that made it clear to Port that they could get him without a trade. Am I wrong? Was Hedland contracted at Brisbane? As for Ball, what could he have done if he wanted to help St Kilda with a trade? What's the mechanism? And would it have worked if it was Freo rather than the Pies he wanted to go to, and it was clear he wanted to live in WA, and Freo had first pick in the relevant draft? That's the point I seem to be missing in my ignorance/thickness.

Yes it would be good to here from him directly but I doubt we will. Sadly I don't agree that most 'abusers' had the managers in mind as well as Jurrah. But anyway, my point is that I'm not convinced Jurrah (or his managers) could have done anything to force a trade, so the abuse hurled at him/them for that may be unwarranted. Jurrah is unlikely to have total control over what his managers and Port do and say. So I wouldn't blame Jurrah for the bad way it was released to the press without knowing more. He may be as p*ssed off as we are.

The OP had ended his remark with a flippant '...just saying' without making it clear to me at least what his point was. So my response was under an assumption of what I felt he was most likely to have meant, ie he was being sarcastic. Not unknown on this board. Maybe that is patronising, but he hasn't contradicted my assumption. I didn't say anything about moving to Adelaide being OK. But I will now. Clearly if a large part of his family is in Adelaide (apparently as refugees from their home town) he is clearly less likely to 'fail at being a westerner' in Adelaide than in Melbourne.

thanks Redleg. But given the circumstances, why would Port (say) believe him? They know he will go in the draft unless he gives away AFL entirely. So unless MFC is prepared to take him (ie sign or commit to signing a contract), Port just calls his bluff. But since it is clear MFC is not prepared to take him if he insists on living in SA, Port will call his bluff. So the only way what you suggest would have worked would be if he kept it secret that he waned to live in Adelaide and pretended he was keen to return to Melbourne (city). Are those posters jumping on Jurrah p*ssed off for him not doing that? But given what's happened over the last few months, who would have believed him? I can understand disappointment in the whole situation being at the root of the anger of many posters. But I'm not convinced Jurrah could have treated MFC better. (Port and his managers are perhaps a different story.)

I agree there is doubtless variations in all cultures. But frankly I'd say a family which insists on living in the same suburbs of a major city for example, is more mutually dependent on each other's presence than mine for example, where my nearest relative is hundreds of km away and the rest many thousands. I claim to love them, but I can clearly live without them happily. My point is that tribal cultures where for millennia people have not got on jet planes and lived miles away is more likely to be at one end of the spectrum than modern western culture. And western culture a few hundred years ago was also 'closer' than it has become recently. Perhaps we should talk in terms of 'mutual dependence' rather than 'love', though I personally suspect that there is a correlation between the two. BTW, the fly-in worker gets to spend more time with their family than an interstate AFL player who can probably only get home twice a year. The fly-in worker gets to fly-out every few weeks for weeks at a time.

I'm assuming you are sarcastically trying to say that Jurrah was prepared, just like a modern westerner to move interstate, so therefore what I said about the difference in the cultures is bunkum. If so, that is a silly rebuttal. Clearly he tried to be 'western' and failed - I would have thought that strengthened rather than disproved my argument.

I have to admit I have not read all of the posts on this thread but I'd like one point clarified since some posters pour sh*t on Jurrah for not giving the club a chance to trade him. Could someone who really understands how the AFL works please answer the following: What could Jurrah have done to engineer a trade? As far as I can see he would have to first sign a new contract with Melbourne. Is that correct? But if MFC is convinced he won't live in Melbourne (or were thinking of de-listing or rookie-listing him anyway) why would MFC sign such a contract? What if no-one wanted to take him - we'd be stuck with a contracted player who wouldn't play. So we'd have to sack him and that would look bad for the club in the hands of the media no matter how well-intentioned MFC was leading up to that. If I'm right, then there is no way Jurrah could help the club to do a trade - so why jump on him? Also to RR and those who say 'we all love our families, so why consider Jurrah differently', I say 'get real'. Families in modern western culture are enormously looser than they were even a few generations ago, let alone in comparison to a tribal culture like Jurrah's. So sure we 'all love our families', but we are prepared to take jobs overseas or interstate or on the other side of large cities, or go on long holidays overseas and maybe only see relatives a Xmas etc. The level of 'love' may be the same (though I doubt it extends as far), but the practice of it is completely different.

That's just silly. Put completely crap under 14's who have no hope of ever being any good against skillful under 14's and see what happens. The crap ones won't have any skillful moments, let alone dominate inside 50's for most of a quarter. So logically we are not that crappy and have some hope of being good. The question is 'if we can do it for some significant amount of the time, what do we need to do to ensure we do it for longer and better?'. Some of you guys just refuse to see any positives just because we have had such a bad year. The rest of us can understand your frustration - we share it. Some seem to think seeing positives is a sign of supporter weakness which somehow affects the players and allows them to be 'weak'. You're dreaming if you think what people write here affects players in any way compared to what goes on inside the club.

Sorry to see some positives in the gloom, but I thought the team did pretty well for a good deal of the first half. There were some pretty skillful and competitive moments - we just couldn't score any goals when we dominated the forward 50's. Hopefully that and the midfield deficiencies will be addressed with recruitment and injury recovery (Mitch). It wasn't as if Freo weren't trying during that time. We just fall apart when the opposition gets a cheap goal or two. That is partly down to lack of confidence which is easy to lose given our truckload of deficiencies.

so why does the gambling industry whinge about 'tanking' in any cases other than outright bribery to fix a match? I disagree. Smart punters and bookies already take into account all sorts of things which might affect a result (likely weather, possibly injured players selected, final teams etc). Adding in a few more uncertainties just tests gamblers skills further, eg. is side A 'experimenting', are they 'playing for a home final'. The AFL should arrange the rules for the good of the sport, not for gamblers' special interests.

Yes gamblers should take experimenting etc into account, so why does the gambling industry whinge about 'tanking' in any cases other than outright bribery to fix a match? I can understand the 'ethos' of the game being anti-tanking, but not the gambling angle. That said, I still think there is not much of an 'ethos' difference between winning the next match and winning in the longer term (by getting home finals or getting better draft picks). It's up to the AFL to make rules which don't encourage anything which inhibits teams from trying to win every match by the largest margin they can...... without tiring in Q4 their star player who's needed in the following week (hmmm impossible perhaps).

I don't think you can argue that manipulating a winning margin (to achieve a good outcome/home final) is not essentially the same as deliberately losing (to achieve a good outcome/planning for next season). If it's OK by Mathews to manipulate the score to get a home final, surely it would also be OK to lose your last match to get a home final. Depending on the ladder you might want to win by only 1 point. Or even lose by a large enough margin to get your percentage below another team's and thereby ensure a home final. What a farce that would be - instruct your team to kick the wrong way. Organize lots of interchange infringements. :>) Gamblers - you just need to build this possibility into deciding on your bet on the winning margin, just as you have to do for lowly teams possibly losing to get a good draft pick until the AFL cleans up its act.

I'd be interested to hear from those who bemoan our 'culture' etc and 45+ years of failure on the subject of the 45 years (or so) of failure of the Bulldogs and St Kilda. What's wrong with their culture? BTW, did you ever see the Junction Oval facilities? How could anyone be 'professional' there and see themselves in the same league as Cwood, Carlton etc.

This poll was set up for those who like self-flagellation. Anyway, have any of the wrist-cutting brigade forgotten that if we had selected NN, by now he might be back in WA playing for the WCE at peak form having gotten used to the game at MFC? How does that influence the 'did we get it right or wrong' question? It is either too soon to say as many posters have said. And perhaps it will never be clear because of the 'go-home' factor which can only be decided in a parallel universe in which MFC selected him. Edit: posted without seeing samsara's post.

I agree the umpiring was terrible. I particularly liked the irony of the holding the ball "didn't make a genuine attempt" paid against the Adelaide player who was comatose. We could indeed go on all day. But leaving aside the incompetence of Sunday's crew, a couple of glaring rules/interpretation needs attention by the AFL. The 'genuine attempt' nonsense as pointed out by Nasher is top of the list. He also reminds us of Buddy's natural arc. There should be no exceptions, eg. "because I'm tall, my natural tackling arc is to rip people's heads off, so you can't pay over the shoulder against me".

I was starting to loose interest DD, but not now. I live in NSW where the free-to-air TV broadcast all the GWS games (which means we see fewer other games - curse them). But I have keenly watched all the GWS games for one reason only. I wanted to see $cully flattened (though his hovering around packs makes that unlikely). Failing that I watched with glee seeing his poor form matching his integrity. Now how can I overcome this addiction next year?

I hope you are right, but it might be hard doing a serious tough pre-season with that looming over you.

How predictable. You and another poster or two miss my point. I don't like threads about drafting Cloke, so I don't read them. But I know what they are about because they (usually) have a meaningful title. What about starting a thread entitled "Not the Not Tom $cully Thread" - we could put all sorts of meaningful stuff in there. Ah well, back to ignoring this thread for me. I guess I'll just have to die wondering if there was something interesting in here to read. Bye.

I expect those who read and post in this thread enjoy it, but perhaps there are many like me who don't read it because it no longer has a clear purpose and title. As a result many of us will be missing out on whatever pearls of wisdom are posted. The thread was created as a reaction to the endless discussion of $cully on other threads. That has dwindled to a trickle calculating how many thousands of dollars he is getting per kick (snigger). So at he risk of having my head kicked in, and hear the obvious responses of "ignore it if you don't like it" etc., can I suggest perhaps it is time to close the thread?

yes?

Our supporters have the right sort of passion or at least the woman near me on Saturday did. She booed loudly every time $cully came near the ball but applauded Junior when he scored a goal for GWS.

Of course the emotions of every Demons supporter were split as the siren went between wanting a win versus the reward if we didn't. Can't blame anyone but the AFL for putting clubs and the supporters in that position. The sensible outcome of all this should be that the AFL states that the rules at the time could lead to the appearance of tanking (or some other word better defined) so we have changed the rules and will change them further and we are setting up a working party to examine options like those used in the USA.

thanks - I was unsure about that. Hopefully they do it asap.