The Chazz

As a forward, Tom Mc hasn't reached his potential yet. He has shown glimpses of "something", is it potential or just cameos? I think potential. Harmes has reached his ceiling in my opinion. ANB, I think he may be the same. I also think Hannan, even though he has been in the system for jus 12 months, I'm not sure how much there is left. (Nb. This isn't necessarily a criticism of any of these players, because as it stands, they are more than serviceable "best 22", so it will take improvement from those lower than them to replace them, which is a good situation to be in). I'm 12 months out from knowing about Stretch and JKH. I think they have potential, but could end up being depth. Stretch's attitude will at least give him the best possible chance to succeed. I have concerns about Kent, Wagner and Weed.

WTF does this mean? It's like I'm arguing with a child. Obviously you think these types of guys would "die for the club". I called it BS. I think as long as Lyon and Schwarz are receiving a healthy income from their media roles, they will survive just fine, regardless of the state of the MFC. There is absolutely no comparison between these two, and someone like Richo and the Tigers for an example. Irrespective of Richmond's ladder position, Richo flew the flag for the regardless of his stature in the media industry. Lyon and Schwarz have drifted in and out when it suits them.

It's so hard to split the top 3 (Wiz, LJ and Jako). Even though The Wiz is my all time favourite Demon, I selected Jurrah, just because his level of freakishness is something I can't see being topped. It takes a special player to captivate an entire crowd any time the ball is in their area. The above three did it time and time again. The decline of Liam Jurrah is up there with Ox's knees for me. The amazing part, LJ is only 29 - he could still have 3 years or so left on our list if things went differently. Imagine LJ, Hogan, Jeffy, Trac and TMc in our Round 1 2018 forward line. Wow.

Rubbish. He's no different to Lyon in this regard.

Schwarz... The player - could've been anything, and there was plenty of proof of that. But obviously struck down terribly by injury, that I can't think of any superstar coming back from. The man - I don't rate him. He's an up and down Melbourne supporter, that picks and chooses what to say and when to say it, often with no care for any one or organisation, other than himself. The only bonus of him being on the radio is that the Demons get a bit more air time than normal.

That's right, rest the body, and it needs resting. But it's the extent that some rest the liver, that's the point Hodge was talking about.

This is industry standard for successful teams. Luke Hodge was just on SEN, said that after their first premiership they celebrated for 6 weeks, but it should've only been 3. They missed the finals the following year. But that's 3 weeks for winning a flag. I wonder how many of our blokes downed tools for 2+ weeks this preseason. I'm all for having a spell, but it's what you do in that spell that can take you from being good to being great.

This is the best, and most likely outcome of this whole thing. The fact they have got the 4 Friday games, that's the truly abysmal element of the fixture. We can't change it, so let's just sit back and watch it all crumble for the Blooz.

I'm interested to know which parts of the fixture you consider abysmal for building crowds and memberships? Is it a particular time slot? Ie Sunday at 3.30pm?

You claim that our '18 fixture is abysmal from an attendance and membership point of view. Wrong. Members should, and many do, sign up regardless of fixture. If someone doesn't sign up because of our fixture, then they are more fickle than I first thought. Attendance should continue to build as this group gets better. They players don't GAF what time they play a game, and the time of the game has nothing to do with their chances of success. The more success they have, the more our crowds, irrespective of game day/time, will grow. We have early success this year, which I think this fixture has definitely set us up to achieve, then memberships and attendance will take care of itself. As a side note, in; 2018 - 14 games in Melbourne, 11 at the MCG 2017 - 14 games in Melbourne, 12 at the MCG 2016 - 14 games in Melbourne, 12 at the MCG Yep, we are soooooooo hard done by in 2018. FMD.

This attitude has irritated me for the last 12+ years. Hope to build membership? You do realise that people buy memberships regardless of how many games they go to? I lived in Qld for 10 years, could count on one hand how many games I went to in that time where I used my membership. Didn't stop me from being a member though. It's called supporting your club. And this rubbish about building attendance - there is one secret ingredient to building attendance for the MFC, it's called success. For us, it comes in different forms, from playing a good quality/brand of competitive footy, to seeing W's on the board. We are a loyal bunch, we've had to be. If we are up and about, our supporters go to any games, at any time, on any day, providing it's our home game, and it's at our MCG. Too many Melbourne supporters are conditional supporters, which is understandable as we've also had too many players that are conditional players.

When you have it reported that some 400 "supporters" email the club CEO to whinge about a list management decision. When you have a group of "supporters" attend the B&F and vocally throw their support behind a player being offered up for trade, one that was clearly moved on because of his standards. When you have "supporters" that pick and chose the games they go to because they are too precious about the time of day that's being played. I'm not saying we are the reason we're not winning, but it's certainly playing some role in blocking the cultural shift that PJ and Goody are trying to achieve.

I swear, we could play 22 games at the MCG, 11 of them on Friday night and the other 11 on a Saturday afternoon, and people will still find reason to complain. We have been given a draw that gives us a great opportunity to win enough games to make finals. We have been given a draw that gives us, the supporters, an opportunity to go to a lot of the games. Given our status, our draws over the past few years has been quite favourable, it's just we haven't been able to make the most of it. It's time for supporters to stop pointing and whinging. This whole mindset of "poor us" has to cease. We need to demand more from our players, and the club should bloody well demand more from us. We are no longer "insignificant". We are more "neutral" now. But between us supporters, the playing group and the club, we are entering an era that could see us become something special. Pizzing and moaning about the draw just continually allows that negative cloud to hang over our heads.

LOLsies at those saying we are "shafted", etc. We are such a delicate, mentally fragile community, aren't we? I don't think any player on our list will be sooking about the draw. If they just turn up with the mindset of winning any game, then we will make finals easily.

Carry much weight? What are you talking about? Those opponents are of lesser quality to us, we should expect to win those games. Do you think top sides don't expect to win those sort of games? Of course they expect to beat sides worse than them. We still weren't a top side in Roos' time. We don't have any excuses now.

Sorry Faulty, but according to some, our premiership chances are determined by how many games Essendon play against this year's finalists, how many Sunday twilight games we play, and if we play interstate teams in the NT instead of Vic teams. Our supporters need to HTFU. We have a list full of quality, and should demand more of them, rather than sweating the small stuff over our game being on Fox Footy instead of Channel 7.

Don't blame the system, it's an unaccountable way of looking at it, and just adds to the soft culture that many supporters create. Truth is, we will never catch up if we can't consistently start beating the teams below us on the ladder.

Here's a simple way of looking at it. We have 12 games of 22 against sides that we finished above of in 2017. It can be argued that we are developing better than all of those sides below us. If we want to be a serious finals contender, there is no reason why we shouldn't win each of these games. Of the remaining 10 games, we would need to win a minimum of 2. 14 wins and % had you in the Top 4 this year. Edit - we won 4 games this year against sides that finished above us.

It is without doubt that the "compromised" draw has helped even up the competition. We should've made the most of our draw this year, but failed (enter the 4 x consecutive 6 day break arguments). Fortunately we are in the middle group of teams that really do have no excuse to aim for top 4. Our draw will be significantly easier than the likes of Geelong. I bet we don't hear them whinge as much as what some on here are/will.

It's any wonder that any other team and their supporters still don't rate us, they only have to listen to the pizzing and moaning of our own supporters about trivial and at times nonsensical issues.

The problem with your Essendons, Collingwoods and Richmonds, they have these showcase games each year, so depending on when they are scheduled for, they will either play that team once or twice. Reality is, Essendon could finish on the bottom, and Collingwood on top, yet they generally play each other twice in a season. I was hoping that going in to 2018, we'd have a thread about the fixture where no-one gives a toss about who we play, where we play them, or wholes plays who, mainly because we are a stronger side and can beat anyone, anywhere at any time. Clearly too much to hope.

I'd rather be paying a bloke $250-$300k to run around at Casey until his contract is up, compared to a bloke on $500k. We're also talking about a former number 1 pick that has played over 150 games, who is considered a senior player, and one that the young guys should expect to look up to as far as standards, etc. Compared to a guy that was picked up at 48 and played just over 50 games. And not only that, you are comparing a tall forward with a small forward. I acknowledge that it's your opinon, which you are absolutely entitled to. I'm just trying to make you realise how ridiculous it is, for your own benefit.

How is it hard to comprehend? Watts' contract is/was far more than Kent's, so moving on Watts was a logical choice there, especially with brining in Lever, as well as the current contract negotiations with Gawn and Petracca, as well as the upcoming TMc extension. We have more cap space to work with now. Further to that, we got pick 31 for Watts. Would've been lucky to get 88 for Kent, which would've been a totally useless deal. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for 2018 Kent to play a similar role to that of 2017 Ben Ken, but to say getting rid of him before Watts was hard to comprehend, is in fact hard to comprehend itself.

Will be interesting to see how we play Lever. At Adelaide he had Talia taking to "big" forwards, which allowed Lever to do his intercept so well. Could see Frost lining up on Dork-ins with Lever just picking him off all day.

I'll go as deep as required - we wanted him gone, there was one buyer, they only have so many picks to offer, we got the best deal that Port could come up with. Some might think he was worth a pick in the 20s. Reality is, there would be no chance that Port was going to offload other player/s to move up the draft order to suit our demands. They only had pick 31 to deal with, and we accepted it and wiped our hands clean of another wasted number 1 pick of "that" era (other than than 15% of his salary over the next two years).