RalphiusMaximus

I can add a few to that. All passes should be low and hard. The high bomb is BANNED Clean hands are a must. Pass in front of your teamates, not behind them.

The problem is that Roos hasn't done what he said he would do. He said when he arrived that he would promote players who were knocking down the door at Casey and that under-performing players would be demoted. When has that actually happened? Max Gawn is the only player who has been promoted on the back of good form at Casey. Who has been dropped? Jack Watts, and he did it himself! Roos has been playing a conservative game of selecting the safe side regardless of form or the effort they are giving and ignoring the fringe players trying their guts out at Casey. Of course we're getting an insipid effort on game day when the players see that consistent form and effort aren't rewarded while slack selfish play isn't being punished. You want to see a real fighting effort from the side in the next two weeks? Promote the four or five players from Casey who have been consistently in the best, regardless of who they are or what people think of them, and drop the same number of players from the senior side who have been slacking off. I don't care if that means bring in in Jordie McKenzie and Dean Terlich for the last two games or dropping someone from the leadership group to make way for them. It has to be done. You can't do any more harm to the club's image than you've already done this year. For mine, I say bring in Jordie McKenzie, Aiden RIley, Mark Jamar, Jack Fitzpatrick and Mitch White, all of whom have had good runs of form and should have been called up well before this had Roos been true to his word. Drop Lamumba, Dawes, Howe, Brayshaw (he's cooked and should have been rested weeks ago) and whoever else isn't performing. The point is that it would be rewarding the players who have done the right thing and worked hard at Casey, it would be punishing the players who aren't putting in for hte seniors, and it would tell the entire list that they aren't safe and they'd damn well better put in if they want to keep playing.

Pity it had to be this week. Maybe we should give him a week off and bring this up against an opponent we have half a chance to compete with. His 200th might just be enough to convince the side to put in an effort.

I actually quite like my Dad. I don't see why I'd inflict something like that on him. I'm sure I can come up with something more enjoyable to do.

A friend who supports another club suggested that this was the playing group calling for the coach to be sacked.

I think people need to stop looking at supercoach and dreamteam scores and look at the actual impact a player has on the game. Michie is our best Goal assist player, largely because he's the only mid we have who has even the slightest notion of how to kick to a forward. He also rarely sells a teammate up the creek the way most of his teammates do. His fundamentals are far better than the rest of the team. His output has steadily increased as he gets more time in the senior side. There are about 18 players in line to be dropped before him at the moment.

Just watching the replay. Antonio is the HBF we've been crying out for in the Men's side. Fast, decent kick, very good mark. Daisy Pearce is looking pretty damn impressive too.

Newton, Riley, Michie.... Not sure we can call them raging successes.

Here 'Tis

IF he wants to stay and isn't asking us to overpay him then keep him. If he's got wild notions of earning $600,000 a year then let him go earn it somewhere else. Simple. He's a good enough player to keep on the list, but not such a world-beater that we need to pay him overs to keep him. Pretty much like Howe really.

Humbug. We make a play regardless. It's not like he's signed anything.

I really hope they're talking about the good Tom Lynch and not the Adelaide one.

Link?

If it was the one from Gold Coast I'd be thrilled. The one from Adelaide, not so much. I was devastated when we missed Lynch by one pick and took the Spud Cook instead.

Give a long-suffering sigh and grab a drink.

I'm pretty happy with Viv to be honest. He's not spectacular, but now that he's being given a run of games we're getting a better idea of what he can do. He's been steadily improving his output, which is nice. He isn't hitting the scoreboard directly, but he gets a lot of score assists and his passes to the forwards are as good as anyone in the side. He also makes very few bad errors. His turnovers tend to be in close quarters when he's taken the ball under pressure rather than in open play like so many of our players. The big surprise for me has been his poor tackling, given that this was one of his selling points when we first made a play for him. I expected much better defensive work from him.

When Rivers left I was in the "good on him" camp. I'm prettys sure I said something about he'd done his bit for Melbourne and deserved a chance at a GF with a better side. Now having watched the club lose more and more important players than anyone else through the idiotic Free Agency system, I have had the opportunity to reconsider. Free agency has by now been proven to drastically favour the top sides and relegate smaller clubs to the status of feeders. We have players just biding their time until they can jump to a more successful outfit. I just can't respect someone who thinks they can just walk into a top side and enjoy the rewards of everyone else's hard work. I agree. Thompson may have had reasons for wanting to go back to Adelaide, but ultimately we developed him and the moment he started showing something he walked off to be a champion somewhere else. On a related note, I am so happy that Carlton showed Henderson the door the way they did. It's by far the best thing they've done all year. The player told them he didn't want to be part of the club anymore and they told him to clear out his locker and not come back. Perfect response. Even better would be to make him go to the draft, but I doubt they'll go that far.

Melbourne and the Doggies were both heavily involved in the women's amateur competitions. I don't know if the clubs approached the AFL with the idea or if they simply volunteered when the AFL floated it. I suspect the former. As Little Goffy said, both have a significant female presence in the club administration as well which helped. I seem to recall also that the AFL has raised the idea of a professional women's league, with these games seen as laying groundwork and market testing. Having just thought to look again, I found THIS in the Age. As for point 3, the players are all contracted as part of the MFC/Bulldogs. Obviously they don't earn that much, but they have full access to the training facilities, league medical coverage etc. The last three years we have had a draft to fill the squads. Each club is able to name a certain number of players to keep in their squad and the rest have to nominate again for the draft.

Quick skillful players who can kick goals are often a good thing. He's a bit on the small side. so he'd better have great pace.

Agreed. I have no respect at all for players who want a free ride to playing finals in a team that has already done all the work. It's no surprise that these guys have struggled when they get to top sides and discover that they were expected to work for the privilege of playing in a great side.

I love watching the women's game. Had to miss this year because of work which sucked. Anything we can do to back and promote them is worth the effort. Maybe we need to follow in the footsteps of the Matildas and do up a calendar for fundraising? Put that shot on the cover. Edit: Probably should throw in that I'm not advocating they strip off for it like the Matildas did, just that a calendar would be pretty cool.

Yep. A few times, most notably one of the wins against the Bombers where he dominated and in the last quarter marked Watson when they put him forward to try to pull something out of the hat.

Again, how will it ruin the day? The office-workers who won't be working that day don't make a bit of difference to the parade, because none of them are there watching it anyway. They spend it in their offices. The people who traditionally do come along will still do so. Maybe some who normally work will take the opportunity to come along as well, making it a bigger, better event. Yes, some small business owners may be inconvenienced by having to pay one whole extra day of penalty rates, but believe it or not they are in the minority.

Plus NicNat didn't want to play in Victoria.

Plus writing a column for the Herald-Sun.