Ho Chi Dee

You found Lyon's comments what now? As for the main question, what Nasher said. You've no idea what Mahoney is like as a coach and there is no obvious correlation between being a great key forward and being able to coach. All your OP does is display a lack of patience.

I'm slightly alarmed it took you 3 minutes to read that! Not much substance there.

What's more to the point is the excellent conversion rate of 'supporters' to members we obtain. I remember reading recently that we have the best ratio on this. It's a point I think is worth trumpeting given the amount of carp Melbourne people are given for 'not turning up' or 'being counted'. So credit taking for those who are due, sure - but some of that should be going to us as a group.

Yes, I thought it was all pretty ordinary. There were numerous suggestions of what was wrong and none of it unsubstantiated, but much of it passed off as fact. I've had enough of the speculation as well.

Of all the days for the australian network channel to fail here in Saigon, it was of course tonight. So was relying on the radio call, but it sounds odd. If the goal umpire was so sure it's strange that he'd let himself be talked out of it. How far from the goal line were the 'touches'? My original point though still stands, if we made more of just a couple of the numerous chances we blew it'd wouldn't have mattered what the umpires screwed up.

Best to trust your first instinct with these types of threads. I understand the pain, and it is a good point - what is supposed to happen if both umpires are 'certain' they have it right? But in the end it just highlights the importance of taking your chances. Currently we don't give ourselves anywhere near the reward for our effort.

Amazing game. We have our first real chance in decades of producing elite midfielders. If his decision making and execution by foot was as good as his hands, he'd be unbelievable.

Our challenge now is to start convert our chances more often. That first quarter is how we lost it. Heartbreaking again. 2 games by less than a kick. We should be top 4.

Hughes!! I'd forgotten how stressful being competitive is!

3 points at the last break. Great to see us sticking with them. Hope that first quarter doesn't come back to bite us. C'mon Dees!

Back out to 7. It has that annoying 'close but not enough' feel about it at the moment. It's a good test of where we're at.

ABC have just dissected Jack during half time. Parkin convinced he has application issues off the field, saying he works hard enough on ground, but his approach to training, gym work and recovery isn't up to the level required. Given Parkin noted that he's an 'outsider looking in', I'd love to know what he bases his opinion on.

Given Port's notorious hard lines in their previous trading history, I'd think we'd need to give up more than we'd want to, so can't see either being a real possibility. But a first round pick for Boak - we could use more speed, ball winning ability and clean skills - only that's not going to carry much weight this year.

Insecure much? Sounds like you're typing from the 50s with that attitude mate - wearing pink and recognising women! Don't they know real men do neither? Get a grip. It's for a good cause. I'd understand the negativity if it was a one off commercial grab like the M&M Blues or the yellow Pura Saints or the crass commercialisation of the hawks' new 'kokoda' strip, but for this? If you're so impassioned about the history the jumper represents, where's the animosity towards the 'away' jumpers? Anyway have you seen our guernseys the last few years? The dyes on the new materials make the yoke look pinkish anyway rather than a blood red. This thread hasn't done you any favours.

Which elite level CHFs of recent times have waited until they were over 28 to become 'champions'? Most of them are nearing the end of their peak by that time. As has been noted numerous times here, all truly good KPFs have shown promise early on, and become champions well before 28. Brown, Riewoldt, Franklin, Llyod, Carey etc. were all recognised as being amongst the very best of the competition by the erly 20s. Schwarz, as a Melbourne comparison, was ready to join such ranks at 22. 'Good' KPFs might take until their late 20s to make the most of their talents, but elite ones do it early. Your note about where Jack's AFL output is compared to other top level KPFs is true, and your call for paitence is sensible. However the idea that we shouldn't expect much from Jack in the near future is off the mark. If he's to become A grade, and we need him to and expect him to, he should be showing signs of what he is capable of towards the end of this year and in 2011. If he's to become what we want, he should be amongst the competition's best by 2013. From what I've seen of him, I'm confident he will do that, but if we are waiting until his late 20s, he will not have been the player we needed. Given this is essentially his first year, it's not too much of a worry yet - but if he is still only producing similar performances in the VFL by the end of the year it will be concerning.

Would you really want it longer though Nasher? Think back to '07-'09, the last thing I'd want is an extension of watching the mfc being thumped with no hope of finals and with no real incentives to win. With fewer games, each game essentially means more. 17 would be fair. You'd play each team once and could change homeground advantage each year - that seems like the only way we'd get close to having a 'fair' draw. The way the game is travelling at the moment it is going to be hard to sustain the level of intensity over 24+ rounds. Increases in quantity rarely correlate to increases in quality. In saying that, it wont happen. There will be yet more football played. All for the sake of $. It's a pity the running of the game now is seen solely in monetary terms.

Priceless.

Good post Vibes. Last year the team did show patches of being able to execute the plan properly, so the question is why is the confidence down so much of the time. Bailey keeps talking about how they need to move it quickly and take risks, but it was painfully obvious yesterday that most had no confidence to take the game on. There's about are a few decent footballers to come back into the side - Sylvia, Jurrah, Garland, Morton, Watts - who have the requiste skills to take risks. I'm prepared to take yesterday for what it was and wait a few months yet unitl we have most of our future out on the park together to see if the confidence for the plan is there before we talk about re-structuring gameplans. If we're still lacking the confidence to make the plan work in the 2nd half of the season, then simpler plans might need to be thought of.

But which 2-3 year KPF other than Bradshaw has been an achievable target and at what cost? Bob's anaolgy works - it's currently about getting the base of the cake right. To do that we need to use our high picks and use them well. When St. Kilda picked up the pieces for their current side it was 2000-2002. Yes they had good years not long after, but they were led mainly by then-senior players. We don't have a senior playing stock that is capable of that. So if it's taken the current St. Kilda core 6-8 years to be as good as they are, it's reasonable to think it will take something similar for us. I'm not sure many people want to acknowledge that. That is not however an excuse for dishing up yesterday's first half. All of the other players named in this thread bar Bradsaw would have added very little. Any good KPF we could have recruited would have cost us a decent chunk of our cake base. Once Sylvia, Jurrah. Morton, Garland are back in we will look better than yesterday - but it's going to take a long time yet to be really good. Recruiting yet more medicore KPFs is not going to speed up the process. I think Bob has had this thread covered.

No to the first, a good case for the second.

And you call me Mr Doom?! Don't you ever get tired of being so reactionary? No team has ever been stripped back to the level Melbourne is now. Most other teams that have gone down the 'youth' path have at least had a handful of decent senior players to help pull things back together much faster. Aside from Green and Davey, Melbourne has no senior player that is above average. The team is about where anyone who gave it some rational consideration would think it would be. It's going to take a long time to become a consistently good team. Yes, yesterday was terrible. We should be doing better than that. But what have been the real alternatives to going the youth path we have? Bob is correct. Trading in for a KPF would not have been the answer, by the time we'll be ready for one, whoever we'd traded for would be past it. And apart from Tippet (2 picks after Petterd from memory?), there hasn't been an opportunity for us to pick up additional KPFs in the draft positions we've had. Bradshaw has really been the only option. Yes, he'd only have been here for a year, but I've sympathy for the views that we should have taken him. But again, apart from that, there's been few options to recruit senior KPFs that would have helped more than they'd hindered (i.e. through loss of picks). The overwhelming majority of our class is between 18 and 20 and they have little protection. Many posters on here need to seriously assess where the list is at and save themselves the reactionary swings between unsubstantiated enthusiasm and unjustified criticism.

Pretty much as expected really, but there were glimpses from a few that showed that a future is there. It's just going to take a while. Trengove and Scully are going to be seriously good. The amount of work Scully puts in to get to contests is brilliant. Not the most skilled by foot, but wont matter too much given he'll get himself free so many times through his work rate. And Trengove is going to be pure class. Along with Grimes, there's three players from today who are going to be very good. We haven't been able to say that for a while. Liked Strauss too. He'll prove excellent value once there's a better side around him. And so too will Bennell when he gets confidence to back himself. We're going to have plenty of days like today for a while yet, but if we can consistently have the 6-8 best young kids we have out on the park (which didn't happen today) then the length of time it takes before we stop dishing up crap like today will be greatly reduced.

I think all that exercise shows is that due either to injury or youth we have a significant amount of players in the senior side that don't provide a great deal to be excited about. Unfortunately much the same can be said for the "other team". The side for this week: J.Bennell, M.Warnock, J.Rivers J.Grimes, J.Frawley, J.MacDonald A. Davey, C.Bruce, N.Jones J.McDonald, M.Bate, R.Petterd B.Green, B.Miller, J.Trengove M. Jamar, L.Dunn, B.Moloney IJ.Strauss, J.Spencer, J.McKenzie, T.Scully If we're being honest that side is full of mediocrity and worse, and only a few players we can hope will have a real future. Warnock, Jones, Miller, Spencer, Jamar, Dunn, Moloney, Bruce, McDonald, Rivers don't strike me as the driving forces of future success for one reason or the other. Bennell, MacDonald,Petterd, McKenzie it's still too early to tell. For me that leaves Scully, Trengove, Strauss, Grimes, Frawley playing this week that we can have genuine hope about taking us somewhere. But for the most part it's only hope at this stage. As for the "other" side I'd take Garland, Gysberts, Morton, Blease, Watss, Jurrah, Sylvia. Again, most of that is 'hope'. We can carry a fair share of mediocre players - every good team does, but I'm not excited about our 'depth'. It's all up to a handful of players either playing this week or not to make this club something. It's going to be a fair while before we can tell if they'll come through as needed though. Until we figure out if we have a solid group of A graders, depth is meaningless.

If Watts, Scully, Noah, Grimes and Morton develop to the heights we hope they are capable of, I think many will be surprised at how tactically apt Bailey will appear on matchdays. As has been discussed previously on here, the key to success is having an elite top half dozen players - if this happens the rest of a team suddenly looks much better. If you have the quality at the top layer, coaching is made to look pretty easy. I'm not all that worried about Bailey's performace in 3-4 years. If our recrutiment team has made the most of the opportunities the club has sacrificed for over the last 2 years, the most important factor for future success should already be present. What Baliey's performance over the last 2 seasons has indicated to me is that he's a good choice for job that needs to be done now - development, and he has the fortitude to see success achieved. Redleg's observation in the OP is an important one as well. The list changes have been significant and what we have now is a very inexperienced list that needs plenty of time to come through together. Those putting pressure on Bailey to see amazing onfield turnarounds next year aren't really taking this into account. Yes it should be better next year, but it most likely be slow progress and development should be the measuring stick, not constrained limits of wins. Its worth remembering that its taken 7-8 years for the players St Kilda picked up when they were hopeless to be able to lead them to a position of serious challenger.

Why? I'd prefer for a deal not to be reached and take him via the PSD. 4 picks in the first 18 and an excellent, game breaking midfielder would be a nice end to the year. Unlikely, as he's using the threat of Melbourne to try to force Port to send him to Hawthorn, but I don't see how anyone could be adverse to gaining Burgoyne.