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Thanks for sharing.

Your mail may be right about Jetta wanting to go back to WA but he is very much under contract until the end of 2012. Source

Put it this way, if he starts trotting out "competitive" then we're more than likely going backwards.

This is the essence of the debate. Freo already had a coach and put in almost a clandestine operation to seek out 1 man. Melbourne (like Adelaide and Western Bulldogs) on the other hand was in a fully transparent situation - it needed a new coach. Not only were we obligated to perform due dilligence on screening multiple candidates but we had a duty to do it ethically. If Melbourne went through improper chanels with 1 or more of those candidates whilst putting on a charade with the other candidates our name as a club would be mud. Yes, some candidates will be favoured over others in the screening process but the process itself has to be above board when dealing with the industy as a whole. Freo wasn't dealing with the industy, just 1 man behind his managers back. Had either Adelaide or the Dogs pulled a "Freo" then perhaps there would be an arguement of some sort but they didn't for the same reason Melbourne didn't.

tbh I'm not a fan of inducting our top draft picks with numbers of club legends. Just give them a number and let them make their own identity out of it. Like some others have said give 31 to a kid and move on. Sick of all the symbolism crap we get caught up with at times. From now on it's actions.

Painting all "small clubs" with the same brush based on the last 30 years serves no purpose in the context of the latest billion dollar tv rights deal IMO. Ok, so you've moved from "an interstate team" to "new markets in NSW and QLD". I think it's fair to say that new teams in SA, TAS, NT, ACT and probably WA are not feasible in the short term so that restrics your generalistic comment there. A relocation to Tassie may work in the not too distant future though. Assuming that you purely had NSW or QLD in mind when you made that statement, given that we already are expanding in QLD and NSW now via GC and GWS what you are ultimately suggesting is that it would be more financially viable for the AFL to have MFC fold now and start up either a 3rd QLD or 3rd NSW AFL team. Have you put even a remote amount of thought into how long it would take for a 3rd QLD or a 3rd NSW team to be viable let alone self sufficient and how much long term investment it would take from the AFL given the money being pumped into GC and GWS? I'm not arguing against the idea of new markets opening up new revenue sources but the further the AFL expands the more money it has to put into manufacturing those markets. The AFL can't grow any faster than what it already is for multiple reasons, the main one being cost and sustainability. All of a sudden what was a blitzkrieg (SA, WA, Sydney, Brisbane) has come down to trench warfare. Winning over GWS and expanding GC will take a lot of time and money. So we come back to your initial statement: "If Melbourne merged or dropped out of the competition and were replaced by an interstate team the AFL would be better off financially." This is such a willy nilly statement simply due to how unpractical it is for the AFL to expand into new markets faster than it already is. Melbourne is part of a 18 team competition which is pivotal to the rights deal along with the new markets which can only grow organically over time, not just be plucked out of thin air. The AFL knows this. Not much of a revelation there, I doubt anyone would disagree with that. It has no bearing on the practical aspects of your previous comments though.

Wow, I don't necessarily disagree with that but I don't know how you could quantify such a notion without an in depth analysis. How do we even quantify the significance of MFC as 1 of 18 clubs (ie 9 games per round) which is critical to the latest tv rights deal? Are you talking from a tv rights perspective or are you suggesting any old "interstate team" if it entered the comp would be more self sufficient and have a more successful profit model as a club?

Rhino this has no baring on our home attendance figure comparison. Read my post earlier in the thread and you'll see that I explained why (along with others) why such a drop in home attendances would occur.

Bump: A little debate from last year that can now be put to bed regarding our home attendances for 2011. 2011 Average Home Attendance: 31046 2010 Average Home Attendance: 37379 As expected our draw made a negative impact here but it is a pretty significant drop. Obviously our year in general exacerbated this to some degree.

Am I missing something here?

Not from my observation.

Not necessarily a bad way of going about it. If we can get something like this done early in trade week (yeah I know it usually drags out) it still gives us a chance of getting a mature player of some description if we want to en-trade a pick to get it done. PS Mods may want to merge Warnock threads.

This market has been opened and closed a few times in the last month or so but yeah, the closer we get to pre-season the more we'll read into it I guess.

He isn't a part of our future or the modern game but he can at least hold his head high that he gave it his all over the years.

I'm not worried about whether he'd be around for a flag tilt or not, nor the ultimate cost if he went off the rails again - he'd be on sfa and we could jettison him as quickly as we got him. I just don't see him stepping up at AFL level in 2012 for varying reasons. That alone makes it a simple 'no' for me even before weighing up the risk factors. I'm happy for him that he is getting some sort of fulfillment at VFL level and would be open to having him as a key forward coach down the track if he's matured a bit (people may scoff but his kicking technique, reading of the play and body work are exceptional), big 'if' though.

I don't think a rookie spot proposition is unreasonable for Aussie. He has to realise that he's coming off a small base in 2011 and even as a rookie he'll still have the opportunity to play senior games next year if he steps up.

Once JK finishes up with Hawthorn will he dwindle in to oblivion or will he actually get worse?

So Schwab gets a 1 yr contract/extension, does anyone know where Connolly sits and what are people's thoughts on his value and tenure with the club?

You'd have to be quick before it explodes.

Perhaps a subtag on the thread title... In the opinion of Damian Barrett

Peddling McNamee doesn't change any aspect of my original point. If you don't think that it would have been farcical to have axed Schwab in light of Saturday's game just say so otherwise wtf are you on about?

Rhino I'm talking in the context of Saturday's loss for crying out loud, surely you can fathom that. To have let a CEO go in the wake of Saturday would have been farcical.

Surely, even if the club didn't require Schwab's services next year they were never going to sack a CEO during the season.

We actually closed the gap in FD expenses from 2009 to 2010 compared to Geelong, Carlton and St Kilda just to name a few. Going by Hawthorn's FR possibly them too.

I don't hold as much optimism for Morton as some others do but to put this into a list management context is so so hard for varying reasons. As 'rpfc' mentioned in the list management thread, we can't get too carried away with delistings with the state of our list atm. Unless we got handsome compensation for him going to GWS or traded Morton to a team willing to cough up something decent (does the compromised draft help us here?) then it's probably better to keep him on our list for 2 more years. Of interest to me is whether his management and the club come to an amicable contract negotiation. I say this because IMO he just doesn't have the currency to command a "typical" contract for a #4 pick with 4 yrs under his belt (regardless of injuries) but he may see things differently. Will be interesting to see how this one pans out.