Mydee

To misquote Napolean Bonaparte on China- Melbourne is a sleeping demon- let her sleep for when she awakes she will shake the world- The Demon has just roused for its slumber

A friend was working at the MCG last week and came across a dumpster full of 2014 MFC membership scarves. Surely they could have been given away to a charity/community instead of going to landfill. In fact Rohan, I did just that my brother in law who doesn't speak a word of English was going from Asia to an architectural conference in Germany in the middle of a European winter. I was charged with buying him thermal underwear and threw in a Melbourne scarf. I immediately regretted this recalling Jim Stynes incident on the Metro in Paris, when some idiot asked him if he was the one that ran across the mark. Fortunately my brother in law wasn't assailed by a toothless wobble person neanderthal, but it couls have been a close thing. And anyway who would you give them to. Red and Blue aren't the preferred colors in the slums and sewers of the world

Absolutely, as the great Irish poet W.B Yeates wrote," The worst are full of passionate intensity while the best are coldly cynical" Every club have had some committee members and staff who have long associations whose abilities don't match their enthusiasm. I think that this is OK to an extent because they are able to harness networks of supporters through identification with, for example ex players, but when this becomes almost the main criteria for these positions and the club is run by an pod boys network it becomes introverted less objective and narrow in its outlook. Passion is best left to supporters and fund raisers

Thanks again I just took the package as an add on to my normal membership, which I renewed in October. I will let everyone knows how well it works when i get to Bangkok in May.

If you are up there love to catch up except I drink Heinekens

Thank you Your information has made the move so much easier. I would love to catch up with anyone in Bangkok when we are up there

With mixed feelings we are about to relocate to Bangkok for two years in May. My only real regret is that I think the Demons are on the cusp of success andI don't want to miss this. I was looking at armchair membership with digital access. However I see that this is not available outside Australia or New Zealand. Can anyone advise of any way of seeing the games in Bangkok either by video etc or at a location that screens AFL games. Thanks in Advance

That is partly true although even Euro Suds (AKA Heineken) which is brewed here, by either Lyon Nathan or CUB, is brewed to a Heinekin recipe bears no resemblance to other CUB or Lyon Nathan products It differs markedly from the Heineken brewed in Holland which is far more Hopsy and that brewed in Bangkok which I have tasted. The same with Becks. However if you look around you can often get imported Heineken or Becks but often at inflated prices. If you like affordable European beer Aldi often has Peroni on sale at about $45 per slab and some of the liquor outlets have other German beers Bitburger, Kongsberg at about $40

Fair enough- Some boutiques beers are fantastic and have been for a long while, however they are not generally available. I was commenting on the generally appalling standard of Australian commercial beers, Carlton, Resches and XXXX Tooheys (especially a vile concoction called Tooheys Old) in particular. I will admit that Coopers Pale Ale and the Tasmanian beers are actually OK but for the same money you can get a slab of imported German beer which is in another league. I don't think it is cultural cringe perhaps just a vague feeling of betrayal having believed Carlton's propaganda for so long. There are a lot of overseas beer styles I just don't like such as the real ales and others that do nothing for me Corona, Singha, Tiger and the large American breweries products. So my question remains with you amendment- Is any Australian commercial beer worthy of bearing a Melbourne player's name on it?

In the dark ages Victorians and New South Welshmen used to debate the relative merits of their relative brews Fosters VB Carlton and Melbourne bitter versus Tooths Tooheys and Resches. This was usually done with a fair bit of vehemence and a lot of hyperbole -However they all agreed that Australian beer was the best in the world - the argument was whivh particular state produced this nectar of the Gods. Thank god for cheap airfares and the growth of international travel. The blinkers were lifted, Europeans had been making beer for centuries and had just about perfected the process, what's more they didn't adulterate their beers with sugars and other nasties. Just malt hops and water. For what its worth my favourites, all Pilsners or lagers are Konisberg Paulina Pilsner Rachenberger (???) Urquiel the Polish beers (can't remember the name) and at a pinch Becks and Heinecken. In the context of this thread The question should be - Is any Australian beer worthy of bearing a Melbourne player's name on it? For example, I don't wan't Ron Barrassi's name on a can of Barrassi Bitter if it is undrinkable, what an insult to the great man.

It isn't a good time to be sampling members vs guests - it is the off/off season where nothing of real interest is happening, world's best bikini aside. Have another look after a win or contraversy during the playing season.

Soc it to him Hemlock

This is fantastic, if it is sustainable, to even challenge for a premiership, everything must fall into place and not the least of these is the "back room operations". So hopefully we will see the end to people wishing to donate money being ignored, tax assessment notices left in drawers and sponsors being spurned. In my opinion it is almost as good as a first round draft pick. Congratulations to Jackson and the team.

I am well over 40 but these days I have about 4 Becks and a good lie down

break out year -sounds like the player or club is about to experience a bad case of pimples

Yeh but they play football not solve theoretical physics equations

Real Footy reports Jack Trengove as saying ""It's going to be a lot of boring time ahead for me, sitting on the coach especially in the next month or so. "But it's all a part of it." Perhaps we can await for their next report that Paul Roos has been smothered by our ex captain. Meanwhile they have advised Eddie Mcguire to "Let it go" Good advise to Eddie in any circumstances. I am not sure what "it" is but can hazard a guess.

In hives?

Emselle and Townsand?

My main interest in the game is to gauge how far we have to go to be a contender. So far it looks a long long way.

Thanks Budge for raising this interesting topic. In the absence of any other factors clubs do go through success cycles based on the development of the playing group from recruit through to retirement. On this basis the premiership or success window seems to last about five years after that time issues with replacing player stocks usually leads to the gradual decline of the club's fortune, or the downward part of the cycle. So after premiership success a club will be among the contenders before falling away. Historic evidence in the AFL seems to generally support this broad time frame that is Fitzroy and Carlton in the early part of the last century, Collingwood in the 1930s and Melbourne in the late 1930s and 1950s. and later the emergence of North Melbourne Hawthorn Richmond and (re-emergence) of Essendon as powers However the cycle isn't exact and sometimes teams drop away suddenly due to other factors, player revolts, wars etc and sometimes clubs in decline snatch a premiership with a final gasp from the player group, as Melbourne did in 1964. However the cycle seems to have operated under different parameters to those prevalent today. There was limits on recruitment and transfers of players between clubs under the Coulter Law and later through recruitment zones. Sometimes the cycle can be affected by exploiting the rules that the AFL/VFL currently dictate like North did the 1970s, and as a consequence of recruiting older champions the cycle was consequently shorter, the exploitation of compensation draft picks by Carlton manipulation of the salary cap for the new State sides and the cream of young talent being allocated to the new clubs Western Sydney and Gold Coast . Free agency is another variant of interference with the success cycle its effect will be to syphon much of the talent from weaker clubs to stronger clubs so that the less powerful clubs become nurseries and feed players in their prime to the powerful clubs. I suspect that our sport will become more like Rugby League where, players are idolised by fans while at the club but the likelihood of going elsewhere makes the idolisation a very temporary phenomena.

In terms of the comments of Ralphus Maximus and others I suspect that we have recruited too many athletes and not enough natural footballers and perhaps the discrepancy between junior and lower ranked footy is just too great, both in terms of skill levels and the nature of the game played. Just some underdeveloped thoughts on the matter, I haven't entirely thought through the implications or even the hypothesis

The Game was televised live interstate, after three quarters of sheet I have switched to reruns of Midsummer Murders which I hate. Worst effort ever can't even beat an injured pretend team. I am considering donating next years membership to a cowardice research institution.

The well known football gossip columnist Caroline Wilson has yet again pursued her obsession with the MFC tanking issue in a piece in the Fairfax press Real Footy today. The article; Roos and Demons still coming to grips with sins of the past, attributes Melbourne's current woes to the alleged tanking incident. Will she ever let go? While a certain amount of doggedness is an admirable trait in a journalist, continually dragging up the same old mantra becomes tedious. If the issue was unresolved and of some real importance such as Watergate or the Dreyfus Affair - fair enough but the AFL is no Dreyfus who suffered terribly at the hands of the French military and government because of his religion and Caro is certainly no Emile Zola a talented writer crusading to right an injustice. By comparison Caro is a hack journalist attempting to rack up a very small issue that has now been resolved. The matter itself was arguable, and even if it could be shown that any team tanked it could only have benefited because of some idiotic rules that the AFL introduced the spotlight was exclusively on Melbourne while the actions of other clubs were ignored. And the article does not stand any rigorous scrutiny, for any number of reasons Few players are still playing from the time when the transgressions are supposed to have occurred and some of those Dunn, Frawley and of course Nathan Jones are among our best players While Caro makes a passing reference to Carlton as a further of the futility of tanking she ignores the other more successful clubs who may have been involved but of course are conveniently ignored Most importantly there are any number of factors that have led to Melbourne's present situation, shocking success rate in terms of winning games over along period, bad administration, pathetic coaching, awful list management, incompetent draft selection, inept player development, paltry financial management and a small supporter base come to mind. At best the tanking issue is a small subset of these rather larger factors In fact you might argue that if it were not for the tanking issue we would not have obtained the services of Jackson or Roos. They are the key to our future. While I have some sympathy for someone who having largely broke the tanking saga wanting keep it going as a nice little earner Caro draws a long bow by linking it to the quite reasonable comments made by Roos after the game. Caro, the goose has laid its last golden egg, the matter has now been done and dusted and the caravan moves on. Try to do the same!

The decision is a disgrace, Merrett's action was an act of pure thuggery from the eighties, when his father, another thug played. It was late and at a minimum reckless andmost likely deliberate Yes Merrett probably had his eye on the ball, after he had lined up Pederson's face and the ball was well and truly in Pederson's possession.. Not entirely coincidentally, the incident was a turning point in the game which together with MacDonald's injury lead to imbalance on the backline. But we all learn, provided you get your timing right and the ball is near enough you can take someone's head off. Perhaps we could employ a specialist coach in the area.