Dr. Gonzo

North are debt free for the first time since the 80s, have close to 50k members and have state of the art training facilities and a home base. I think they're doing OK actually.

40k is a good result for us so far but when you compare to the Pies and Bombers who hit this mark in early November and the Tigers who hit 80k in mid-Dec (😲) it shows how far we still have to go. Hopefully we see a big increase on the back of our flag and and sustained success early in 2022, 65k should be the minimum we are aiming for this year (on track considering we are about 10k ahead of this time last year and we ended up with around 55k). Anyone interested in other clubs tallies can view these threads on BigFooty https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/2022-membership-updates.1290913 https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/2022-club-membership.1289401

Have to get a copy of that one. Another one worth reading is Up Where Cazaly? It looks at the development of the game up to the early 80s (published around that time) so just prior to national expansion, quite an interesting read and is a good lead in to Football Ltd. I picked up a 2nd hand copy off eBay I think.

Currently at 40,823 according to the website (towards the bottom of the page) https://membership.melbournefc.com.au/

Yep $4m license fees from WCE (Indian Pacific/WAFC?) and Brisbane (Skase?) helped save the Vic clubs although I think Oakley had real trouble prying the $4m from Skase and the WCE fans have never let us hear the end of it. They forgot their local comp was all but in the gutter as well and propped up by the transfer fees of the Vic clubs (which were incidentally part of what was sending the Vic clubs broke). A very interesting time in the sport, I recommend reading Football Ltd by Gary Linnell for anyone interested in the evolution to the national comp.

Yep Fitzroy Bulldogs playing out of Western Oval was all done and dusted until the Doggies fans rallied and secured $1.1m via tin rattling and door knocking as well as a 3 year sponsorship from ICI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzroy_Bulldogs A great podcast series on this by the guys who did The Greatest Season That Was 1993

For NFL watchers, the Cincinnati Bengals just made their first SuperBowl since the 80s and could win their first ever. Richmond can get stuffed though.

Channel 7 don't care about the rusted on fans, they want "personalities" to draw in the casuals with their inane banter.

Quite ridiculous that 3(!!) players cracked the ton in 93 considering there were only 20 H&A games per team (2 byes each) - the same for 1969 as well. In fact some of the earlier goalkickers like Coventry, Pratt etc would have been during an 18 game H&A season, Pratt kicking 150!

Pretty sure there was a year when Ablett, Dunstall, Lockett and Modra all cracked the ton as well?

44 days 6 hours 43 minutes and 10 seconds 🤣

The Melbourne Lions was much closer if I remember correctly (also 1986) - was all but signed, sealed and delivered until the MFC basically pulled a swifty to try and ensure we would have majority board members (think it was something like equal MFC/FFC board members but the MCC having a board member with a deciding vote?) Probably what McGuire was thinking about.

Hunch

Exactly they'll be [censored] for a while, why would he go there?

How's Kozzies chase down of Hunt wow

@binman is it Swallow or Sparrow? 😆

None of these records embarrass me anymore, win flags and the rest is irrelevant. Well maybe the 190/186 point losses if we can eradicate that I'd be happy.

48 days

I remember an AFL or MFC person also saying a number of years ago that we get Essendon away because we get Collingwood home each year. Now that we share the gate with Collingwood and Richmond it's more likely we'll get Carlton/Essendon home games every other year.

Round 3 2022

We've been waiting 65 years for a three-peat! It was only 16 years between our last two.

It felt like a changing of the guard though. Actually I'm rewatching the 2nd half of this match now (I watched the 1st half the other night). Such joy especially because the Tigers looked on top early, their supporters were actually stunned into silence at what they were witnessing. It was beautiful.

Yep that started it for me and then when we dismantled the Dogs and ran over the Lions in successive weeks I thought we were clearly the best team in the comp it was just a matter of us not falling in a heap as we had been want to do through our history.

I don't hold that against Howe, that only happened after we tried to force him out to the Gold Coast to get a higher draft pick (that used in the Oliver/Weissman draft from memory).

That would be hilarious