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Everything posted by praha
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Yeah did well today. Led well, marked well and presented. That's what he must do every week.
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There should be an inquiry into the umpiring today
praha replied to Yze_Magic's topic in Melbourne Demons
They were pretty bad. I can handle consistently bad, but to be as one-sided as they were was pretty disgraceful. The 3AW team thought the umps were pretty bad today, too. Shaw dropping the ball in the last moments should have been a free kick based on the other holding the ball frees given out throughout the day. -
Collingwood actually train on a ground that has no goal posts over summer.
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I'd rather Newton and Dunn in this side than Miller and probably even Bruce. Neither bring anything to the team, but are more pointless because of their age. At least Newton and Dunn have room to improve in. Bruce and Miller are just not right for this game anymore. In saying all of that, James McDonald impresses me so much. He actually seems to improve as a player. He has actually improved over the past 3 years. You just get a feeling when you know someone is going to be a club legend. I got it with McDonald against Carlton in 1998 at Optus Oval.
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lol gee, a player in the leadership group telling the media how "angry" the team is at their own performance. Never seen that before. *cough* They talk the talk. Let's see if they can walk the walk.
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Unless you have something constructive to add to the argument, as opposed to simply "Bailey sucks!", your post will be deleted. You can have an opinion, pending you at least post something constructive to back it up. Basic fundamentals of society and online communities. In saying that, we will pay 1-2 great quarters, before finally bowing down and losing to the Pies by 8-12 goals on the weekend.
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lol Another extreme. One extreme says Bailey can't coach and is no good, even though he's really only had one full year with the young players. The other extreme is that Bailey is a brilliant development coach, even though no young player has really gone out and beyond in his time at the club. Also, can a mod change the thread title to "Bailey as Development Coach?" or something similar.
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The reason Hawthornwon the 2008 flag (and beat Melb)
praha replied to jnrmac's topic in Melbourne Demons
About as many left handers. -
I posted this on Big Footy. I think a lot of people think that because Hawthorn made the finals in 2 years and a flag in 3, everyone can do it: At the end of the day, the MFC gave Bailey an extension because they didn't want to go into the year with an axe hanging over their coach's head. If you go into a year with no contract, you risk the pressure associated with a possible final tenture as a coach, ala. Terry Wallace at Richmond. They did this so as to remove any speculation. No matter how bad we go, there's no way Melbourne will sack Bailey this year. No way in hell. That will ultimately backfire if we do go bad, because the media will eat us alive (like they are already) If you actually set aside some time to listen to the way the guy talks, he is very, very intelligent and knows the game of football very, very well. He doesn't just talk out of his arse. If anything, he has not given in to temptation and pressue like Frawley, Wallace etc., but instead stuck by his guns and implemented a gameplan he has faith in. It might not work now (in fact, it fails miserably), but it's not like we'd be playing finals football with this squad anyway. If I remember correctly, Al Clarkson didn't start off so flash at Hawthorn and he coped it quite a bit. In saying that, you had a Brownlow medalist and several very good older players to help the younger players grow. We just don't have that because of Daniher and his Christian pacification of the club, keeping around players like Godfrey and Ferguson when they just weren't AFL quality. We are still paying for Daniher's list management, I don't care what anyone says. We have Bruce, Miller and James McDonald as our main leaders and probably in our top 10 players. What the hell does that say? Not trying to make excuses, but it's not like Bailey is working with anything good atm. We have no players (excluding 1-3 year players) that have the leadership and star-quality potential to make this a good team. That has nothing to do with Bailey. Why don't we wait and see how this team performs after three full years of development under Bailey, not including 2008, which was essentially Bailey taking the reigns of Daniher's team before he dumped the likes of Yze and White. Every other coach has gotten that long, and Bailey has essentially only had 1 full year with a list that comes even remotely close to the kind of list he has envisioned. Bailey got there in 2008 and (thankfully) realised the team was not good enough to win a flag. Daniher should have realised that at the end of 2005. There wasn't much Bailey could do, and the real clean out didn't start until the end of 2008. That season was a complete whitewash in that we didn't really achieve much in terms of player progression. Last year saw the likes of Grimes and Morton coming through, and Jones played his first full year. And this year we'll see even more. Bailey is and has always been in a very, very tough situation, and I think he's handling it very well. Hawthorn at least had quality senior players like Hay and Lonie that would get them high draft picks. None of our senior players from the Daniher era would have warranted a top 20 pick between 2008-2010. We haven't had the assets to trade for top 20 picks the Hawks have had. Our only asset was Johnstone, and we got Grimes, who has achieved more in his first 2 years than what Johnstone did in his. And I'm not sure what the big deal is about a 5 year plan? What other option do we have? We don't have a Hodge, Mitchell, Crawford to lead the team, and how often does a team go from the bottom to the top in 2-3 years? The Saints have taken all of 7 years to reach their full potential, and it took them 3 years from 2001 to make an impact with the squad they wanted. Only now do we have the foundations of a team we want to be successful with. We didn't even come close to that in 2008, and we were a step closer in 2009. 2010 has Scully and Trengove. It took the Doggies 6 years, including 2 years of Rohde setting the foundations of the squad they have now, to play finals. Now look at them
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Talk talk talk. I won't be there on Saturday, have a wedding. But I see it this way: 1 quarter of fierce, great play (either 1st or 2nd), then the Pies will come out in the 3rd and kick 5 straight, going up by 5-8 goals, then the last quarter will be a tussle, but we'll still let the Pies kick 4 goals to 1 to eventually win by 9-12 goals.
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At the end of the day, not much difference is going to be made in the next 12 months. Anyone who thought we would be playing finals footy before 2012 is kidding themselves. He is here for another two years, giving the young kids a chance. He might not be the best coach going around, but he's essentially doing what Rhode did at the Bulldogs, and now look at them. As long as the young kids are bled and we get something from our older players, I think we're on the right track. But obviously playing the way we did on Saturday is unacceptable and we're better than that. We need to see improvement, and had the Hawks been at full-strength, we'd have lost by more than we did in round 1, 2008, because I think we actually played worse in the first half on Saturday than we did throughout that entire game.
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How to beat Collingwood: -Outscore them. /thread.
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lol posts like these make me laugh. I pay my membership fees, I haven't missed a game in Melbourne in over 10 years, and I donated to Debt Demolition. I'm only 23 and with a mortgage, and yet I still dedicate my time and money to the club. If me leaving at half-time of an insipid performance is "weak", then whatever. At the end of the day, I probably dedicate more time and money to this club than you, and I have a right to walk out on a performance I've invested so much into. Support goes beyond just being there on game day. I have done more than enough for this club to justify walking out at half-time of a performance more suited to a third-grade suburban football league. They were a disgrace on Saturday, and I merely walked out on a bad performance. I'll be there against Collingwood. I don't like walking out early, but if the performance is bad enough to make me angry that I didn't spend my day doing something productive, then I go without hesitation. I spend upwards of $50 at every game, and on top of my membership, that's a lot of cash pumped into the gameday considering my salary. I'm not asking for sympathy, but I get offended when I'm called a weak supporter. It's an insult, and the only people worth insulting are the players. Me walking out at half-time is as insulting as you can get, and they deserved it.
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The priority pick still stands I'm pretty sure, it's just works out that no one can have #1 besides the GC. I think we will win less than 5. Can't see us improving.
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Considering the amount of stoppages, it's not all that impressive a number. Our gameplan atm is not very fluid, so we handball in circles and eventually get caught in the middle of Hawthorn players, which in turn caused a ball-up. It's been like that for the past 2 years under Bailey. Still, fair effort for a young bloke to be in and under so often.
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10-15 goal loss. Our backline is not quick enough for theirs, and their midfield is far too experienced. Also, I think we may be the first team in a while to not score a goal for the entire match.
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I heard that as well! And it really did look like something Flower would do!
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I suspect I'll have my first child before Melbourne win a premiership, and I don't plan on having kids for at least another 10-15 years.
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Bravo. Good article. If our leaders aren't leading by example and playing with accountability, how exactly can we expect our new players to evolve into league superstars? Once again, our culture as a club is seeping through, and our undeniable lack of a superstar over the past 40 years has a lot to do with our inability to surround good, talented young players with a winning culture. We suck as a football club and to be quite honest, I can't see us turning the tide anytime soon. We are risking moving into Richmond mediocrity. The sad thing is that, unlike Richmond that has the fanbase and corporate backing to stay afloat despite years of on-field turmoil, we cannot survive decades in the gutter. This isn't the 70s anymore. The jumper means nothing anymore. Diddly squat! If the players aren't willing to play for it, I'm not sure I have the energy to support it as aggressively anymore. I left Saturday at half-time feeling utterly dejected. Not angry, but dejected. And disappointed. I just don't know how I feel about this club anymore.
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Okay - be patient, but will the list stay together?
praha replied to jumbo returns's topic in Melbourne Demons
I think we definitely risk being another Richmond. If we aren't successful with this core group soon, they will never get that winning feeling, and we'll be rebuilding every 3-4 years, just like the Tigers. We are really risking implementing a losing culture (if we don't already have one). You could get away with that 20-30 years ago, but nowadays, you need success (obviously). Also, if Pettard goes to the GC, we lose probably our best forward option. -
I thought the same thing when I bought it. I only buy it because I like to quickly look at player numbers of the opposition so I know who is who. But $5! I remember when it was $2.50 back in the mid-90s. Also, I park opposite the Botanical Gardens in a hospital car-park. Was $5 three years ago. $10 now.
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Exactly 3.4 years.
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Let's have some fun: what will Bailey say about today's game?
praha replied to praha's topic in Melbourne Demons
I was starting to worry that someone would miss the point of this thread Thank you! -
Harsh on Frawley. He was under constant pressure thanks to our mid-field allowing Hawthorn mids to easily run into their forward 50.
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I'll start: "Yeah, look, I think that we really let each other down today. We didn't execute some of the things we've been focusing on over the pre-season, and that was our biggest let-down." "Yeah, look, I think we've still got a lot of areas to improve in. I think the idea was there but the execution is what let us down." "Yeah, look, I think that, when you have so many players missing with injury, it does have an affect on the playing group. We have to be able to adapt to that, and that's where players like Dunn and Grimes and Bruce and Green have to step up." "Yeah, look, I think we were disappointing today." "Yeah, look, look." "Yeah, look, it's a bird!" "Yeah, look, it's a plane!" "Yeah, look, I think it's Superman." On the bright side of things, Bailey is always very level headed after performances like these. It can work either very well on the young blokes, or very poorly. I have no doubt his words or tone won't change after today.