praha

You mean play [censored] football for 30 years and make the finals sparingly? Yeah Melbourne's already taking a leaf out of their book.

Top 20 pick so yes.

Watts is done. He'll be gone at year's end.

What's Neeld's average losing margin? Must be 60+. I feel the club is trying to remain stable even in the face of needed change. They play awful, awful football. The team shows absolutely NO promise. I am just bewildered as to how a young, finals-fringe side from 2010, 2011, can break down so badly. Need says they're building the club from the ground up. It seems like they've turned the ignition off but are struggling to get it going again. Is Neeld driving the cultural changes at the club? We really need to start scrutinising his vision rather than just sit back and take it as the gospel. It's just astonishing that a team falls so far below AFL standard. Neither GC nor GWS are as convincingly smashed in certain important areas. Melbourne hasn't lost this man consecutive quarters for 99 years. It's suffered it's worse loss at he MCG in its history. I'm sorry, but "rebuild" should not equate to accepted ineptness. You don't maintain stability when said stability doesn't exist. The club is trying to justify its stubbornness by talking a lot of garbage about stability. It's a get-out-jail-free card for Neeld and the board. I am happy to give Neeld the year...but not with a consistent stream of 100-point beatings and records. No rebuild, no established club, no competitive environment - as minnow as said competitive environment at the club might be - can justify the brand of football this club is playing. Its vision is bold and ambitious. And I get that. But my family has been going to the MCG for half a century. I'm a very competitive individual, and I can handle losses -- "we succeed because we fail," as Michael Jordan famously said -- but such ineptness, excused as the downtime before a promised period of "sustained success" does not sit well with me. No club that loses games by 186, 140 points turns it around in less than a decade to win a flag. We thought the club culture was toxic? It's the losing culture that fuels it. Neeld wants to change this club, but he's regressing it back further than its ever been in the process. I am seriously concerned about this club's welfare.

We will [censored] GWS. If we don't the club will have earnt the honours of being one of the AFL worst teams if all time, if it hasn't already.

When you're second to the ball you're going to get calls against, good or bad. This team gets a lot of calls against it, many bad, because it plays lazy, reckless football. The Eagles were always going to run away.

Yeah, a critique of a critique. Alternatively, he could have written WHY the club isn't as bad as his colleagues are making it out to be, without actually referring to them. Rebutting the media when he should be challenging and/or positively critiquing the club instead.

No. The club needs to stop relying on league socialism.

Sam Bleese avoided a contest? STOP THE PRESSES!

I have to be honest: I find the commentary to be especially condescending. What is it with Melbourne supporters being so damn apologetic? I mean, as great a writer as he is, he somehow managed to politicise the issue within the first few paragraphs. I live in a free country where I expect things to be to a certain standard. I'm a competitive individual and I'd expect nothing less from the club I support in a relentlessly competitive competition. I shouldn't be made to feel bad about that because there are young men losing their lives in Afghanistan. It's actually a pathetic smug comparison to make. It's like he HAD to force his views on war into the article. Yes Martin, we get it. You're a progressive thinking that hates seeing people criticised for their misdemeanours. Those poor, poor footballers. Give me a break. The football club is "rotten to the core" in its obvious inability to develop highly talented individuals. It's structure is fractured, its development rotten, and its culture inept. People need to stop running away from that. Martin is essentially victimising the club, which is not constructive. The club has only itself to blame. We need to stop feeling sorry for this club when it fails to meet expectations time and time again. That does NOT mean we stop supporting them. It means we scrutinise and hold the club to account. I think we've -- supporters and the media -- have done that collectively. Sorry, but I just don't like the article.

Don't underestimate Kerr. He will come back fit and ready to go. He will paste us. He plays for West Coast not Melbourne.

I honesty think he's already resigned. If the person that basically hired you steps down BECAUSE their decisions haven't planned out, that's basically admitting Neeld was the wrong choice. Can't imagine him picking things up tbh. He's look a shadow of his former self this week, like he's reached breaking point.

I will never forgive this club if they give up on Watts. They must keep him. Sylvia is a downhill skier. Talented as hell, reads the play well, but has NEVER, EVER performed to his potential when the club is getting flogged.

So glad they sacked Schwab. Worst player in the team.

I'm afraid it might be a 100-point loss again. They will trounce us in the middle, put the backline under pressure, and eventually it will unravel again, probably mid-way through the 2nd, or perhaps at the start of the 2nd half. Boy is it going to be a long season.

I get the feeling that Neeld is done. He's got a few more weeks but then it's over. Seems like Craig has already taken over proceedings.

Nah.

Barassi lost me when he said Scully should move to GWS.

The way I see it, the playing group hated Schwab because he wanted Bailey to hold them more accountable on-field. He actively tried to change the playing culture at the club. This was driven by the players. It was always going to happen. Do people think Bailey was sacked as a scapegoat? He was sacked because his team played unaccountable, lazy football when it fell behind. The very things the administration wanted to eradicate post-Daniher was being enhanced under Bailey. That is where Schwab's "meddling in the football department" comes into play. His hiring of Neeld is particularly indicative of his influence to change the club's culture. Neeld has come in and it's clear the players just don't buy in to his hardline approach...although I'm starting to doubt his teaching credentials. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very entitled, self-indulged playing group.

I think it's safe to say Colin Sylvia has been "Melbourne'd".

It's not our "fault". We're stakeholders, paying members. If we demand action we should get it. The sentiment towards Schwab was almost exclusively negative. I don't think the club even anticipated that. Do you really think AFL HQ right now is in damage control over Melbourne? Don't you think that seeing as though the club is balancing the books the league would support the CEO? Truly astonishing that some of you actually think the AFL played a power role in his resignation. The writing was on the wall on Saturday.

I am lost as to why you think what he said is so outrageous? The backlash on Twitter and Facebook was like nothing I've ever seen. Almost every comment mentioned Schwab. Not a football fan in the world wouldn't have noticed that. Demonland is pretty minnow in comparison.

My understanding is that post-186, the board agreed that Schwab should hang back and be a bit more focused on the admin side of things. There was a period there from 2008-2010 when he was very active in the media, YouTube, on the site. Maybe that pushed some buttons?

Well said. The club is raving on and on about how far it's come, the progress it's made. "I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." The club's self-proclaimed inroads will only matter if it responds, and soon. Its "building for long-term success" fails because it's attempting to cross the lake via a bridge that doesn't exist. There's "pain" (quoting Mark Neeld) and then there is just downright ineptness. The club must perform. These are professional individuals. They MUST perform.

Wow! A whole 40 members!?!?!?!?!?! It's like the last two weeks never happened!