praha

Bizarre. It is very simple. Rounds 1-17: Each team plays each other once. Rounds 18-23: Teams replay rounds 1-5 (factoring in split rounds and byes). That is how they used to do it in the '90s. If you play an interstate team once, the following year the home team alternates. For Melbourne matches, the home game alternates as usual. That way, teams aren't playing in Geelong 6 years in a row (like Melbourne was before this year). Only way to be fair.

If he does come back to AFL and ends up at another Melbourne club I'll be livid. Club backed him and helped rehabilitated him, gave him a leadership role and stood by him at his lowest point. Saying, "I'm okay now!" and then signing a big new contract with another team is like Gary in Seinfeld pretending he had cancer. Not saying he pretended at all not one bit but it would be very frustrating for him to do that. I could handle him moving back to Perth. That's his home. But signing up with another Melbourne club, I couldn't accept that from him.

Hmm, no. There is more than one option for trade.

Realistically, none of them have any trade value. Delist them and with the cap saved you can probably only fill the spots with players of the same quality.

Bail was among our best in all four of our wins. Terlich is a hack but he puts his head over the ball. Riley had a solid second-half of the year. Hardly surprising, except maybe Terlich. I thought he was a goner.

I don't doubt the kid can be a good player when he hits 26/27 but unfortunately he has been part of a terrible era of the club and we must cut our losses and move on. No point holding onto a kid who will only play well when the team does: we need someone to fill his spot that can actually help us WIN. He is to Melbourne what Brad Ottens was to Richmond: a talented downhill skier who has had a handful of great games, some good games, but has mostly been underwhelming. For both the sake of Melbourne and Jack, it's time to move on. We need talent NOW because the club can't afford to wait anymore. In 2010, 2011, fair enough, but these losses and the body language of the players turns away fans and potential members and the club simply can't afford it, financially and metaphorically. I think Melbourne would need to trade overs to get talent in. They'd need to give Watts + a pick between 20-30 to get a decent player. We could get a player with half of Watts' talent but from an experienced, good side that at least knows how and when to win the football. The club needs to try and get Christensen from Geelong. It won't be a straight trade despite their similarities and we'd need to give Geelong a top 30 pick + maybe even another player. We need to cut our losses, otherwise we're going to end up with another Sylvia, or Bruce (who we should have traded at the end of 2007 for a high pick). Roos is doing now what the club should have done in 2007 and 2008: trade away the good but not great players, while maintaining the bleeding hearts for the club. Instead, it dumps leaders and forces KPP likes White out of the team, all the while letting the likes of Jolly leave without so much as a fight 3-4 years earlier. I imagine he'll trade away the likes of Watts, Grimes, Trengove for picks, and then do similar moves as the Tyson-Salem draft pick moves from last year. It's the club only option. Keeping the players that epitomised the club during one of its worst ever eras seems antithetical to the club's intentions to improve and improve dramatically. There's zero benefit to keeping guys like Watts anymore. Maybe in 2010-2011, but not anymore.

We should use Watts and a few picks to get Allen Christensen.

I get really angry at games where the club plays obviously bad. vs Brisbane, I was livid. I had an older woman in front of me having a go at me because I was being "negative". At the Hawthorn game, I was grounded: they gave a crack. At the GWS game, I was infuriated: why was I there when the players didn't want to be? I think some of our fans are just used to seeing this, and go to games casually as "fans". But a majority of us are downright sick of it.

He plays every single week. He has been playing AFL for 6 seasons. There are plenty of recruits and players that have come to poor teams and played well. He is a downhill skier and is simply taking up space in a team that doesn't have the right cattle. It's time to move on and trade him while he has (minimal) value.

10-goal loss. Easily. Not sure I can get the drive to go. The past 10 weeks have been dead awful, excluding the Essendon game, and even then the first half was deplorable.

Bingo. Beat them in certain stats but every game we seem to get absolutely smashed in the spread, and eventually this catches up and the other team gets on top in the stoppages, and then it's all down hill.

I would prefer it not exist. Relocating is just not the same. You break all cultural and historical ties. Sure, Sydney and Brisbane have supporter ties to their true homes, but they are not South Melbourne, nor Fitzroy. Not even close. Melbourne is Melbourne. Anything else and it's nothing to me. I could make a compromise with a merger but it might take me a few years to get right back on board. I'd probably support them loosely. If they were to fold (God forbid..) I'd probably loosely following the Toiges. I know that's blasphemy around here but half of my family goes for Richmond and I've always had a soft spot for them.

Every single kid has talent. There is no point having a projection system if you're just going to wing it. Melbourne chose a player that anyone else would have chosen had they not picked them. Would Roughhead have been as good had he been at Melbourne? My guess is he'd have started his career with knee or back issues, work his way into the team, struggle to build up form, find a place in the VFL and eventually get delisted after 2-3 years. Melbourne is where talent goes to die. I think it's less about poor recruiting, more about development, and even then I think bad luck has more of a role in it. I also think it's just the general subconscious mentality people have of the club when they walk through the doors. You'd have to be pretty naive to think that being drafted to Melbourne doesn't have significant weight on how the player thinks, just as it would if a player is drafted to Hawthorn, Sydney or Geelong: at those clubs the draftees know where they are at and how hard it is to make the team. At Melbourne, there's always the fact that so many players come and go without doing anything, then you start to wonder why. Just as with any business and working environment, the approach to professionalism and culture is integral. Melbourne sucks at both of those things.

There is absolutely no point dragging the game down into a defensive grind if you're bringing these talls in. The ball needs to be moved fast and direct to our forwards...which won't happen, even if they try. - Drag the game down, confidence drops after 2-3 goals the other way, we lose by 10 goals. - Pump the speed of the game up and use your talls, West Coast outruns Melbourne, we lose by 10 goals. What a depressing team we have to put up with.

The point is that his form might not dictate his asking salary, which would bring the compensation down.

Is this a serious post? What sort of culture exists WITH these players?

My concern is that I think we've seen the kind of player he is. I don't think he gets better than this. He's the kind of guy that will only improve as the team improves. We need actual drivers and influencers. He is not one of those. I like the bloke but I've thought since 2012 that it's time to test his value and go in a different direction. We drafted him with the idea of Bailey's run-and-gun style and he would have been perfect for that but defensively and one-on-one he just doesn't suit the mould. Since Neeld and now Roos, he has been exploited as the player he is: an outside runner that has no place in a defensive grind, especially one trying to find its feet.

I was flying back from Germany during the game but watched the game without knowing the scores, jetlagged and angry. To be honest by the time I finished the game I felt better: I needed the laugh.

They apologise every week. Don't you read the weekly articles on melbournefc.com.au. "We didn't come to play" "We're embarrassed" "We didn't want to win" "We didn't play it out" I'm just waiting for the headline that reads: "I don't know why I'm getting paid to be honest"

I wonder if Geelong would accept: Watts + a pick in the 20-30 range FOR Allen Christensen I think it would be win-win. Geelong get another pick to help replace forthcoming retirees, getting Watts who certainly needs a change and has potential. We get Christensen who is a proven ball winner. Seriously, I think the time to trade him is now. Otherwise we're just going to end up with another Sylvia on our hands.

Just on SEN I heard something about the PP. I caught the back-end of the report so I didn't hear who made the statement, but what I did hear was, "...said it will be unlikely that Melbourne will be granted a priority pick." It was a serious report, not some [censored] journalist making the statement, so I can only assume it was an AFL official. I think the club is obliged to ask for one, but considering the number of top 10 picks we have, the compensation we're going to get for Frawley, not to mention the cap space we have, I don't think the AFL will give us one. EDIT: Wow, F-L-O-G is censored?

To be honest, the team doesn't even need to tank to finish last. If it finishes last, gets a priority pick plus Frawley compo, it could have picks 1 2 and 3. I doubt priority selection will be top 10, though, maybe top 15.

Not surprising. Melbourne is very much in a situation Sydney was in when he arrived. Sydney is constantly in a struggle in they absolutely need to remain competitive at all times to stay viable as a business. Melbourne is well beyond the point of needing to start winning games and relying on the draft simply won't help when the team lacks actual winners among its ranks. I would compromise for a trade for GWS talent, though. But we need genuine, pure talent, no gambles like Toumpas, and try to build this club up as quickly as possible. Unfortunately it's reached a point now where if the club can't win more than 6 games next season, it's going to very quick dive back into the red as sponsors and members jump off. We keep hearing that this change won't happen over night, but I feel the club no longer has a choice: it needs to get talent in as quickly as possible. Talent that has been in the AFL system and has had to work through it. Even getting fringe GWS players would be good because they're blokes that have worked to get into the team but can't. Tyson is an example.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Very naive. How can you not see a connection between how a club that was finals bound hit the bottom of the barrel so quickly? It's not like we were a bad team pre-186: we were thrashing teams by 100 points! We were well on the way. It's clear that there were issues there, and many of the experienced players from that day are now in the team's leadership group. If the current leadership group isn't empowering and leading those around them, what hope do the likes of Tyson, Viney, Hogan, anyone else that needs some guidance, have in evolving into winners? Look at what has happened to Jones: I love the bloke but he is a loser. He walks off the field looking down at the ground. He doesn't know how to win. He doesn't know what it takes to be a leader in a winning team. That is the club's problem: there are still too many experienced losers within the playing group. They all need to go. The hard decisions have been made sparingly. Another rebuild must start now. How telling is it that Daniel Cross, who has been at the club for two seconds, is more of an on-field leader than others that have been there 5, 6, 7, 8 years? How can someone come straight into the club and automatically gain that role? It's quite astonishing, and difficult to believe, I admit, but the most experienced players that have been at the club long-term are undoubtedly part of the problem. It's time to move on.