Little Goffy

Eh, maybe Jones has requested they only make a big deal when he passes 200 and 300. Talk about two completely different 'football journeys'.

Alright, here's my 'on the edge' list. There is of course a lot of time between now and the end of the season - Jamar and Davey could both lift back to strong form. Also, I'm not completely sure about contract status for a few - thought maybe Rodan was given two years? Davey, Jamar, Dunn, Rodan, Byrnes, MacDonald, Sellar, Spencer and Gillies are all to my mind not able to deliver a high enough standard often enough to justify holding them instead of bringing in a new draftee. Feels a but harsh on some, for sure. Pederson with his multi-year deal gets to be defensive depth. Some young guys have been given grace since it is probably not ideal to keep cutting when 9 are already on that roll. By this point it is a matter of 'how much will be get from them compared to pick 154, and do they have growth potential'. Hogan comes onto the official list, of course. Then it's midfielders midfielder aaaand midfielders. Plus a speculative or mature-age ruckman or two, given that with 'just' Clarke, Gawn and Fitzpatrick filling the role at the moment, we would not want there to be a fluke gap. Similarly, no harm in cycling a hard-working tall defender through the bottom end of the draft. Let's imagine six midfielders, two of whom are 'ready to go' at some reasonably AFL standard. That's a good help for 2014.

Quick confession - yeah, I've had a laugh at and been annoyed by Harry O'Brien's media noise in the past. But it has actually settled down a bit in the last couple of years. Now the media presence has burst open with personal issues, and I'm not at all convinced it is so much 'attention seeking' as 'attention managing'. Like they say, you go in hard you're less likely to get hurt. Imagine having the Herald Sun scraping through your personal life bit by bit? Urrrgghhh.

When you've got a high quality, hard working and responsible CHF/FF, hold onto them with both hands. I see where you're coming from and it is an odd thing to suddenly be looking at having more key forwards than we seem to have space for, but that's not a problem I will complain about! Both Clark and Dawes would be glad for the list depth to mean that they don't have to risk exacerbating injuries or overusing sore spots to fill any desperate structural holes. Also, Hogan, for all that he has been hired by Volkswagon to eat returned Golfs, will still only be a teenager next year. For sure he will play games very early but not all of them. Clarke, Dawes, Hogan, Watts, how we suffer. Gawn and Fitzpatrick, how we suffer. Frawley, Garland, McDonald, how we suffer. We've got the best young team of over-190cm players going around! Time to build the short-4rse army to go with it!

Colin's a decent player capable of the occasional burst of superb form. Would be glad to have him secured for the next few years, at a reasonable price, of course!

Don't we already have Pederson to fill that role? My mind at the moment just goes 'Midfielders, Midfielders, Midfielders'. Also,I'm not really interested in targeting average players. I think all effort should go into trading or recruiting players who genuinely stand out. 'Average' can be filled by the developing young players and older players who have lost a little but are still competent.

Man this whole situation is messed up. Harry O'Brien seems to be right caught up in a mix of intensely private things that aren't being shaken out of his mind, and an 'intensely' public life that he embraces with fluctuating enthusiasm and not a lot of measured judgement. Meanwhile, he's looking to be a tough kid at the tough kid's playground at the same time as being the sensitive thoughtful guy at other times. And the noise around it is even more messed up than the situation itself. There are big swinging d!cks waving around all over this thread. That's not pleasant at all, Anyway, I still think he's not a fit for Melbourne's needs in the backline. So I'm done talking about the personal problems of a Collingwood player.

Saw Carlton-Collingwoood game as well. Again, umpriing was a mess. This is a chronic and increasing problem. Dare I say it, but the chickens (of numerous knee-jerk complications to the rules and excessive centralised manipulation of umpiring in response to media noise) are coming home to roost, in the form of total inconsistency and confusion. There are so many Demetriou-era 'chickens' clucking about at the moment, I'm starting to wonder if there will be a surge of demands for accountability come through. I would be genuinely annoyed if Andrew Demetriou was allowed to retire on his own terms, after the aggressive, irresponsible, and empire-building management style of the last decade.

It was 'just another defeat', and that is encouraging, because it is a huge improvement on the 'monstrous shellacking' record of the first half of the season. With the great signs from the likes of Fitzpatrick and Terlich, these last couple of games have moved my thinking back to 'promise for the future is there, and we might swing an occasional upset to laugh about', instead of the feeling of grey blankness that had set in early this season. Making me all the hungrier for midfielders. I want all the midfielders in the first round of this coming draft! ALL OF THEM! BWA HA ha ha ha haaaaaa!

Hey, thanks for bringing up the idea of a direct swap Watts for Yarran. Reminded me of how much Watts has developed and how much genuine low-visibility work he has been prepared to do compared to an actually soft, lazy 'star'. Watts is a long way ahead of Yarran, and Watts is improving while Yarran is stagnating. That said, Yarran could still develop into a potent player, much more than a crumbing forward, Brad Johnson style. He's not that short (180cm) or light (84kg) but has a smart and agile game when he's on song. Would take a the right 'price', but would be wary of getting sucked in.

Wow, this kid stepped up fast. Talk about 'breakthrough games'. Showing everything at AFL level that people were talking about at Casey. Confidence is so much! With Fitzpatrick's burst of form and Max Gawn rucking, marking, and even linking through the midfield in ways his 208cm have no right to do, things are looking 'up'. Except for Mark Jamar. But that's ok, cycle of life.

Funny how those workplaces that don't embrace the concept of 'namby pamby' are also the ones that keep the workcover premiums so high... "Hurr hurr, hurr hurr, essie haircut, I' am so funny... better not let Harry hear about it... hurr hurr, Harry's such a drama queen, aren't ya Harry? Are you sure it's ok if I call my mum mum instead of child-bearing-earth-goddess? Hurr hurr, how's the Dalai Lama going? Where's your robe Harry?" Which is a pretty unsubtle message of 'Don't speak up, sook'. And it's a workplace culture that -directly- contributes to unsafe practices carrying on, from lack of appropriate gear to not properly supervising apprentices, right through to the kind of bullying that gets teenagers idiotically killed about a dozen times a year. Also, I notice the regular references to footy clubs being 'different' like 'gladiators'... Gladiators were generally locked up when not competing. The AFL has chosen instead to allow players to remain loosely integrated with society, thus requiring that these players maintain the ability to effectively interact with people other than boof-heads.

Senior coaches routinely step in to personally press their point when there is a critical part of the game in need of attention. There's not much to be taken from that, though I'm sure the scavengers will pick over it plenty, and get in arguments about whether it means the midfield coach, the senior coach, or board member X and media personality Y are to blame. That said, I don't personally have a lot of confidence in Brian Royal as a midfield coach. The clearances differential is just so alarming.

Ahhh ha ha ha, ok, I've changed my mind, let's get him.

I have mixed feelings about him as both a player and media figure (the only two things I can actually see) Sometimes he can be a potent weapon counterattacking from defence. But we have that. The flipside is, he often plays pretty loose on his opponent which we certainly can't afford given our midfield weakness and the number of occasions that would get exposed for the next year or two. I worry that we'll end up with another Moloney situation - expecting the other defenders to sacrifice their game so he can play his preferred way. Also... he'll cost as much as or even more than Dawes and not actually meet any particular need in our structure. Off the field, I didn't like what seemed like attention seeking, but he does actually back his hype with action at the day-to-day level. For instance, if the story is true and Buckley basically had a go at him for being so outrageously selfish as to sometimes point out that the AFL's respect and responsibility guidelines are actually there for a reason, well, Harry gets a little tick for having a bit of courage to bring things up, even when Buckley doesn't get it.

Carlton's situation is, above all, an advertisement for the wisdom of grabbing Clark, Dawes, and Hogan. Even though he'd been relatively quiet early, as soon as Waite was gone their whole system crumpled up. Total failure. Casboult had some cameo impact and Henderson made an effort when swung forward, but neither are truly able to deliver the critical CHF or FF target. Remembering how many games Carlton has lost by pretty small margins, and the way they have wilted without any structure at times, you can absolutely say that if they either of our two mature marking forwards on hand, they'd be solidly in the final 8. Structurally, our list is much stronger than theirs, in as much as we can scream 'MIDFIELDERS PLEASE' and that's pretty much our recruiting and drafting strategy for the next two years sorted. They have to find and develop a couple of talls at each end. Anyone remember our efforts at doing that between about 2000-2010? Will they do it before Judd and Waite retire? Carazzo, Simpson, Mclean, Scotland and Walker aren't young, either. If they don't turn things around damn fast, they can be added to the Bulldogs and St Kilda on the list of teams in even worse state than the Demons.

Top 3 for 1-percenters in the AFL. Would be doing ok for the 'marks from opposition kicks' tally, too. I'm hugely excited about our three super-mobile tall defenders; Frawley, Garland and McDonald are one hell of a flexible core to build a defence around.

I honestly think Jamar and Spencer are both basically done for. Gawn is passing both, by progressing faster than Spencer and by meeting Jamar as he slips down. Fitzpatrick is beginning to look legitimate (touch wood, of course) as a remarkably mobile tall, but is he really a ruck? Clark can definitely rotate through ruck, Dawes can contribute but he was recruited as, and clearly plays best as, a key marking forward. But I think in that mix we have enough depth of quality to not require a 'never-quite-right / VFL Champion' and a 'no possessions and inconsistent hit-outs' veteran. As far as top-heavy goes, I'm more worried about having too many tall forwards! Dawes, Clark, Hogan and Watts will all be mostly based up there, you'd think. But there are worse problems to have! Which reminds me - back when Clark was recruited I speculated that he was being brought in as a 'forward now, ruck later' player, the idea being that he would cover while Watts (sigh, and Jurrah) developed, and once Jamar retired would move back to the ruck role that he has filled very effectively in the past, at Brisbane. Seems even more likely to be that path, with Dawes and Hogan both with us now.

Also - Women can play football! Women footballers could probably play football a lot better if they were not systematically excluded from participation in all the main development pathways from the age of 12. Chelsea Randall's daughter might have a fair shot if progress keeps being made and the idea that Women Can Play Football becomes a normal one.

Well, the text as presented pretty unambiguously used 'female' as a reference to weakness / lack of ability. Which is practically the definition of misogynist language. Neither your gender nor attempt at humour change that at all. But maybe you were being sublimely ironic, referencing other people's use of 'female' as a term denoting unfitness for football, and turning it on it's head by noting that here was a competitive, winning team and gee don't we all wish our team played like a 'bunch of girls' more often. In which case, sorry for misunderstanding. Did you know there have even been studies about how at a certain point it becomes impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and a parody of that extremism? On the internet the cross-over point is very low because of the frequent lack of cues like 'scare quotes' and the tragic absence of a sarcasm font (though the use of reverse italics is being promoted slowly).

We have another female team? Awesome! Oh, wait, you were being an useless misogynist. Good for you little man, whatever makes you feel good. Anyway, numbnuts aside, what a great day for football; a good small step on a long road.

I am ok with us getting draft assistance up to a point, but I don't think it should be anything like a bonus pick 1. Respect matters. And frankly, if we haven't learnt by now that a high draft pick is NOT the answer, then we might as well throw it in as a club. We are already getting - Multi-million dollar additional AFL funding to help us through a financial crisis of our own making. Hundred's of thousands of dollar's worth of management intervention to guide us through a governance and leadership crisis of our own making. An AFL mandated clampdown on 'influential members' rights' which is tragically necessary to put a hold on a culture of white-anting which is of our own making. AFL-underwritten guarantees to allow us to headhunt the elite people we desperately need, to bypass the poisoned chalice status which is of our own making. Does anyone think that without the AFL's deep and authoritarian intervention in our club there would be any of Roos, Williams or Eade even considering us as a senior coaching destination? I'd rather we were given an extra half-dozen rookie list positions outside the salary cap. That way we might find some substance players to fill holes during development, and if we're lucky we'll grab a gun in that mix. But at least we won't be jumping the queue ahead of every other club, and at least we wont be implicitly humiliated every time our 'compensation player for being a crap club with a derelict culture' has a good game. How would you feel as a Dog's supporter if you watched GWS and Melbourne grab Hodge, Ball and Judd, and you were left with a choice of Graham Polak, Xavier Clarke or Ashley Sampi?

Ok, my constructive criticism of Brent Moloney is "you undermined the development of the club by demanding that other players sacrifice their game to maximise yours, you interpreted leadership as being about getting everyone else to do things for you instead of the other way around, refused to play your part when given direct instructions, brought the club into public disrepute with your adolescent style boozing, encouraged others to do the same, and dropped your head to sook the moment things went against you." Let's just be glad he wasn't a soldier, I guess.

9 years later, a integrity investigation reviewing the case determines that there had indeed been enough evidence in the first place to base a prosecution on it. Already, regardless of the outcome of Milne's trial itself, there will be a number of 'Victoria's Finest' facing severe, severe disciplinary action, and possible criminal proceedings of their own. This is not a prosecution that has been reopened lightly. I can't shake the thought of the horror any victim of rape would go through, to be dismissed and basically disparaged by the authorities even when there was a substantial amount of credible evidence available.

I thought sooking on instagram about other people's bad days was kind of the breathing definition of weak and pathetic? Maybe I'm mistkane? But you're right, Moloney's record speaks for itself; the repeated efforts to bring the club into disrepute with his binge drinking, the sooking when challenged to lift his professionalism at training, the refusal to play a team role instead of demanding that everyone at a clearance block for him and only have one clearance plan that is 'Russian taps it to me then I run and bomb it without looking, if nobody marks it, well, that's because they aren't a very good forward, right?'. The man is Mr Leadershi*. When was the last time any headmaster spanked a playground bully? What are you, 97? Whatever it is, you're clearly still caught up in that magical world of being 9 again, back when you felt important. Tragic truth is, the nerds have moved on to having lives and careers and travelling to places other than Kuta Beach. 1 million Australians are right now all over the world following amazing lives, how many of them do you think are 'raw brutes' like Moloney? You lost, the nerds won, suck it up. Have another drink, tones, that'll help.