Gooner

I had a look at the draw yesterday. I can see 8 possible wins. However, I think we'll probably lose at least a couple of those ones and hopefully we'll get a surprise win somewhere. I'm thinking 7 wins for the season. Whilst that's not much, it's still the same amount of games that we've won in the past two years! As for early season form, we've got a good draw, but we shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves. Teams suffer injuries and improve in form throughout the year and we don't know what the later part of the season will hold. As for the Tiges. I don't think we should take this game easy. We should have a decent crack at them and try to get a big win, not for percentage, but to reward the long suffering fans and boost membership.

Richmond's problem isn't quality. It's depth. They finished 9th two years ago because they didn't have a lot of injuries and didn't have to rely on the bottom few of the 22. When they suffered a few more injuries last year and had a few more players drop off in form and in ability as a result of age, they really struggled. Nonetheless, unless they get lucky with picks, they'll struggle for a few years to come. Richmond's problem is that by the time all the concessions have finished, their key players will be over 25 and on the downhill slope in terms of improvement. They'll get a couple of ok picks, but not enough. However, in regards to the priority pick system, it's designed to make it very hard for teams to get priority picks. As usual the AFL has gone too far in reacting to media comment and changed a decent system to one that is too difficult to get access to. The old system that had five wins in a single year did allow good sides that suffered from injuries in a particular season to get two high draft picks, although that happened only occasionally. Geelong in '05 is the only example that I can think of. However, in my opinion, they should've changed one aspect, not both. They should have provided priority picks in either two consecutive seasons with five wins or less, or less than four wins in a particular season. However, now that we've finished with it, I have less incentive to care if they correct it in the future.

I don't know who came up with this idea, but they haven't done their research. The first round priority pick is available to teams who have less than 16.5 points (four wins). Richmond finished last year with 18 points and are therefore ineligible. If they finish this season with less than 16.5 points, they will get a priority pick after the first round, which is after GC17's picks. The only team who could have a pick before GC17 is us, and we're not going to be tanking in order to get a high pick!

Nah, don't pick Fitzy. He won't play much and scored 5 and -2 in the pre-season. There are plenty of better bench options than Fitzy.

The thing I like about the supergoal is that it's worked in the NBA. The NBA didn't have a 3 point line until relatively recent times (30-40 years ago). I think that's added another dynamic to the game and makes it a lot more enjoyable, particularly when there's only a couple of points in it and a three pointer can win or tie the game.

Decent write up about the bump in The Australian: "Yet on the Monday, the match review panel was able to precisely identify all these particulars in its published assessment of the incident: "West Coast player Chris Masten had the ball, and was being pursued by player Sylvia. Kennedy comes in to shepherd Sylvia, to assist Masten to break clear. The panel determined that Kennedy could not contest the ball and was not able to tackle the Melbourne player, as he did not have the ball. Sylvia was actively involved in the play, he would have reasonably been expected to influence the contest and the force of the bump was not excessive for that situation. "Kennedy did not run far to apply the bump, an elbow was not part of the contact and Kennedy did not leave the ground to deliver the bump. Sylvia was not in a vulnerable position and could reasonably expect contact to be made. The contact was therefore deemed to not be unreasonable in the circumstances. No further action was taken." That seems an enormous amount of information to glean from a fuzzy, blurred inconclusive video. In fact, people who have seen vision of the collision that was forwarded to the AFL and reviewed by match review panel chairman Andrew McKay say it clearly shows Kennedy run flat out for 15-20 metres, past the ball carrier Masten and crash into Sylvia, making contact to his head and breaking his jaw. That is a reportable offence. Nothing black or white about it. Even West Coast officials were resigned to losing Kennedy for two to three weeks. The cynical would say this is a cover-up. The match review panel made a hideously bad decision at a time when the league demands the head be treated as sacrosanct, and all players have a duty of care not to crash into an opponent's skull and neck. Whatever, the result has left our footballers with no idea about the bump rule, no idea about what is acceptable and what is not."

I don't mind the idea of adding supergoals. However, I agree with the issue of the 50m penalties resulting in supergoals. How about this for an alternative? Allow supergoals, but if a 50m penalty is given, the player can choose to kick with the man on the mark on the 50m line for a supergoal, or take the normal goal. As for the other options, I don't like the expanded finals, but I like the expanded season. The closer you get to play every side home and away the more even the competition is.

Great clearance from Trengove, he's getting a bit of the ball. Pettard is looking good also.

39 to 46 missing a fair few chances in front of goal. Sculls, Davey and Pettard have just missed very kickable goals.

If the club employs doctors, they're required to have professional indemnity insurance, so if a club's doctors act negligently to one of our players, then they can be sued, as can the club, but the insurance will cover the doctor and the club would have insurance for business risks also. I'd be interested to know whether the club insures players wages against injury risks though.

I realise that it's way too early to start panicking about our injuries, however, we should consider looking into possible reasons why injuries are occurring. In my opinion, there are three groups of people who could be causing more injuries than we would otherwise have. I would hate to see Melbourne turn into an underachieving club like St. Kilda did under Grant Thomas. Firstly, there's the coaching department. They should be examined to assess whether they're training the players in ways that could cause more injury, or over training them to the point in which they become tired and more injury prone. The fitness staff, for similar reasons to the coaching department should also be looked at. The facilities could be another cause of the problem. If we don't have the ability to assess injuries or aid recovery in the same ways that other clubs do, then we're are automatically at a disadvantage. Finally, there's the medical staff. They should be examined to see whether they're assessing injuries and ensuring that players don't rush back too quickly. Please note that this is in no way a post calling for sackings of the coaching or medical departments, simply a consideration that these things should be looked into. We've got the best lot of talent we've had for many years, let's not waste it!

I'm hoping to go tomorrow if I have time. I can post some updates from my blackberry. I'm not the best analyser of the game though.

Just created a new DT league: Demonland FC Code: 210110

Good to see Watts has put on a few more kilos. Still a lot of work needed over the next few years though.

Looks like Scully is progressing well: SCULLY READY FOR FULL TRAINING

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Our financial position is still a worry. We've made a small profit, and reduced the debt, but we need to continue to improve things. If we slip backwards again, we could be in real trouble. We've got to make sure we support our (hopefully) on field success, with off-field success also.

True re: the reduced expenses, but remember our player payments are likely to increase in the future as our players improve and demand higher wages as a result.

There are several reasons why our revenue is lower at the moment. 1) We didn't have a major sponsor for the first third of the year 2) Our on-field poor performances have reduced gate receipts Furthermore, a number of the club's payments are based on government grants, AFL grants etc and therefore misleading. We're still not in a good financial position, but we've significantly reduced our debt and are heading towards profit a lot more than in previous years.

Thanks for the link. I really hope that the broken leg doesn't effect him too much in the long run. Thankfully, although it's a major injury, it's not likely to be a reoccuring injury like soft tissue injuries are. Looking forward to seeing him on the field in 2010.

You have a reasonable point but for one important aspect, the next two drafts are heavily compromised. In a normal situation, finishing 13-14th will still generate a quality draft pick, but after taking into account 12 GWS plus every second draft pick going to GC17 in 2010 and every second pick going to GWS, there's not much of a benefit from finishing low on the ladder.

Obviously forgot Trengove 9

I think most people understand what you're saying, and I agree that there's a high probability that the profit was massaged (remember an audit doesn't mean that everything is 100% correct, just that it's not massively wrong, and there's got to be some serious concerns for the auditor to qualify [ie. report is unreliable] the financial report). However, I think that there are several aspects that you haven't looked at, which people have mentioned several times. Whilst I agree that we had the option to pay them out, it simply wasn't worth it in terms of the financial aspect, the risk of an unknown player and possibly most importantly, the reputation of the club.

The issue really was Dylan Grimes vs Joel MacDonald. If you'd prefer Grimey Jnr to Macca Jnr then that's your opinion, but it's as relevant as those who would've preferred Lucas or Talia to Gybletts. Meesen & Juice could be paid out would've meant that we could've got another rookie with pick 6. Panos obviously wasn't rated that highly as he was a late 2nd round pick anyway, so unless you rate Panos highly, which almost every club out there doesn't, the best option was to rookie Meesen and Juice.

They may not be still on the list if uncontracted. However, the recruitment staff obviously decided that Meesen & Newton's potential + cash > unknown draftee. New players always seem to be really good and almost certain 100 game players, but the fact is, that a lot of the players drafted only play a handful of games and are then never seen again.