Dr. Gonzo

At least no one can accuse him of not smiling!

I agree personally and I have been a member for 25 years but I can understand where others are coming from - not necessarily in on-field results but off-field management, I can understand someone not joining up over the last 2 years. Especially when people have other considerations like paying for mortgage/rent, bills, essentials etc a footy membership may be a luxury that can be easily rationalised away especially if it's not something you will get entertainment from that year. As PJ said at the AGM the club has lost those members/supporters and it is up to the club to win them back.

AFL members with club support (pretty much all of them, some are Competition Members only) get counted towards their clubs membership tally and $140 of the AFL membership goes to the club.

Signed up my wife over the weekend as a first time member (AFL with MFC club support) so you can add another one to the list - she barracks for the Cats and doesn't know I've signed her up yet so will be a surprise for her.

Just as important as their expertise and leadership is the club having off-field stability with great leaders at the helm. Getting them both to sign longer term contracts will remain our two biggest priorities over the next year or so bigger than securing the signatures of Hogan and Frawley.

Did you learn nothing from the year of "will he?, won't he?" Scully put us through? I'm not sayin he's gone but trying to justify every decision/article is fruitless so why bother?

We should win round 1 and if we don't I will be [censored] off. We should also be aiming to make finals and after that reassess our goals. It's the same every season.

Yeah but the approaches are worlds apart - Roos is no BS but also respects the players so it's more a cooperative no BS whereas Neeld was no BS but his approach was confrontational pitting himself against the playing group as a typical old-school taskmaster.

Back to the AGM it's a shame it's on the night of the SuperBowl as again I won't be able to attend. Last year I had a heavily pregnant wife at home and the year before it was the same night as the Soundgarden concert. Bad timing all round.

The problem is if you take out all emotion and look at it from a purely detached, logical point of view every decent player we have would do what a sensible person would do and leave to go to a better club. Professional sports can't be void of emotion from the supporters or the players otherwise you will not succeed. We need to create an environment where players love the club and don't just love playing professional football - some clubs have this and while it is generally related to success or the possibility of success that is not always the case.

Pretty sure they've done this the last 2-3 years.

Relax... Seriously though even being at Docklands, Saints (who will be competing heavily for the spoon this year) minus Dal Santo, McEvoy and Milne should be a good first up hit out for us.

Surely SURELY everyone who visits here is already a member...

Really? Before Chip came along I'd been waiting close to 2 decades for a decent full back since Danny Hughes left for the Crows. Chip is one of, if not my outright, favourite player. I'll be shattered if he leaves but am not sweating bullets just yet. I've thought he'd go for more than a year now so a walkout wouldn't surprise me it would still [censored] me off though. Having said that I could understand it in his position, no one would want to spend potentially their whole career anchored to the bottom not playing finals or GF's.

Yes but the point is debt incurred to purchase a revenue producing asset is different to debt incurred because you're losing money on gameday/paying out contracts.

There is good debt and bad debt. We have bad debt that has been accumulated due to a lack of revenue and paying out contracts. It is not debt that has been accrued to be reinvested in profitable business (some of it maybe but not all). The analogy with Collingwood is OK as you are right we need to leverage our strengths however I think if we're looking at a club to emulate we should be looking at Hawthorn who have capitalised on their Tassie deal and strong on ground performance over the last 7 years. They came from a prett lowly position (crowds similar to ours) to be one the strongest clubs going around. Now we'll have to see how they go once the teams performance drops off but I think they've done it right this time.

Get your tips in! Surely it's Jones although at Sydney Roos did have a triumvirate of captains so perhaps Grimes and someone like Dawes or Frawley as well?

Australian society is dominated by ignorant arrogance and arrogant ignorance.

I'm not sure what this even means or what context it has to the conversation? So you're saying because you feel like you contribute to "making what this country is today" and you're an "everyday true Australian" (jingoism at its finest) that any genocide committed against the traditional inhabitants of the land can be swept under the rug and ignored? No one is saying the recognition of the Indigenous people and the atrocities committed against them has to come at YOUR expense, crazy that someone could be so egotistical.

Wow. The sad thing is I'm sure you're not even being a little sarcastic.

Ploise exploin???

Yeah I'm just so sick of hearing 'victims' complain about the dispossession of their traditional lands, the destruction of their culture, their marginalisation from modern society and the genocide of their people. I really wish they would just get over it, I'm all burnt out on compassion fatigue. Haven't we been made to feel bad for long enough??

Nah we need the military, I'd just prefer they were used for the defence of our nation rather being a lapdog to US imperialism.

Wow no wonder this country is going to the dogs. One thing you should never underestimate is the ability of Australians to rationalise racism, the genocide committed against the Indigenous people and the ability to place blame on the victim.

So you'd rather it goes to some Nazi storm trooper invading some third world country to profit mega corporations and expand Americas military hegemony rather than someone who does positive work to try and lift up people whose land was stolen from them and who were almost wiped out thru over a century of genocide?