DeeSpencer

Scarlett and Mooney having kids and not getting on the [censored] every weekend apparently helped as well. Not to mention the leading teams thing actually worked for Gary Ablett and Stevie J's suspension back to the VFL worked wonders. But that was an outstanding group of players. They made a prelim in 04 and should've made another in 05. I mean we'd have to hit this years current draft with 4 or 5 genuine A grade prospects and then climb that ladder to a prelim and then stagnate for any kind of comparison. I look at this Melbourne team and think 5 wins this year and 7 or 8 next would be actually achieving potential. It's just a shame we haven't got there.

http://www.melbournefc.com.au/melbourne/news/2013-08-21/photo-gallery-gym-session Just for the sake of it in a somewhat quiet week lets see where this thread takes us. First question though why when the guys are benching does a player hold a mini cricket bat thing across their chest? Is that the closest we can do to peptides?

We have higher honours in almost all sports I don't see why AFL and AFL clubs should be any different. Players can get injured at training or any other time. The players are for it, so make it happen. As for the format I think it should be: Vic v SA - Game 1 Loser Game 1 v WA - Game 2 Final - Winner game 1 v game 2 Rotate who starts where and where each game is played each year. It gets all 3 main football states in play and the majority of players and I bet half of the NSW/QLD/Tas would find links to other states to make it work for them if not too bad. Too many rubbish games featuring rubbish players get played each week. It's time to put on a regular show case of the top line talent.

McKenzie is a much better tagging option than Nicholson for Dangerfield regardless of speed. McKenzie has shown he can position himself and restrict players, just like Ling did for a long time without speed. Nicholson doesn't have that ability, he really just chases someone around and wouldn't compete with Dangerfields strength. We also can't afford to have 2 taggers in the inside midfielders. We need someone to win the ball. Garland to take Dangerfield when he goes forward similar to the way we did a nice job on Ablett.

I doubt Magner will play 100 games at any other club. Even if he made it to another club and did well at his age and his skill level he'd be lucky to get 100 games. He's 26 so he'd need 6 seasons on the list. Taggert on the other hand whilst the club has been disappointed I'm sure that he hasn't been getting more ball at Casey or doing excellent defensive work I see no indication to delist him. He missed almost his entire first season and was restricted in preseason. There are plenty of others on the list to cull before Taggert. Toumpas will come in because he deserves to and he will not play Casey finals because he's done well enough to not spend a lot of time at Casey. That's fine by me. Deliberately qualifying guys for Casey is nearly as bad as pulling them and not letting them play for Casey.

Which is because his prose follows his ego. The guy thinks he is the Essendon drug story, yet really in the 6 months or longer he's been tracking it I'm yet to really see a scoop. He did well to get the interview with Kyle Riemers but you get the feeling anyone with a bank cheque could've worked that out.

Wondering what everyones thoughts are on best first year player. Has Viney done enough in the last month to over take Terlich who played a very good first 2/3 of the season then missed a game and slowed down a bit. Or Matt Jones who starter pretty well but has also been quite the last month or so. I put Kent in the poll as well for the sake of it. Could it come down to the last 2 weeks?

My only problem with the mini draft pick is that it's more unfair to the other clubs. Give us a PP and everyone moves down the draft order 1 spot. Not such a huge problem for a lot of picks. Give us a mini draft pick and we benefit but the real winner may be the club we trade it with which really disadvantages the other 16 clubs. Barrett should examine the facts. We've had 2 PP recently. 2008 second round - Blease and 2009 first round - Trengove. Both are still with the club and whilst they aren't setting the world on fire not ever player drafted high does (particularly when you've had bad recruiting and development) and both have given us the opportunity to improve as a team and we can't. The rest of our high draft picks are completely deserved. We earnt those picks as the fixture dictated. We got Hogan through the Scully compensation and that was completely fair. We lost a number 1 draft pick to a team willing to pay him 1mil a season. The funny thing is GWS and Gold Coast just took huge chunks of first round picks and no one was too up in arms. Yet to give us one pick is some travesty now?

Should play in Darwin later this year, then come back to Melbourne and play a season at Casey or other VFL side proving he can stay out of trouble and be happy in Melbourne and then he should nominate for the PSD/Rookie drafts at the end of next year. I think other clubs would most likely let us have him if we were part of the process of getting him back to footy. The question is not if he's good enough but if he will work incredibly hard. Even when he was with us he didn't work hard enough on the field.

Disappointing for Jesse and for Casey. But good news that he'll be right for preseason. Although by my count the VFL grand final is not for 5 weeks. If the guys beat Box Hill this week they will likely head in to finals in second place with momentum. Do we want to give up on it so easy?

Steady on. Nahas and Saad had both kicked a lot more goals than Best has this year when they got picked. He'll spike a lot of interest due to his good form and has been invited to a state draft screening but that's no guarantee. The questions will be 1) How much improvement does he have considering he's been a cricketer more than a footballer to this year 2) Is he really good enough, it's a hard life playing small forward in the AFL and you generally need either extreme pace, top line defensive work or midfield potential

You do know there is a difference between being annoying to your team mates and having a bad attitude? The players like to hang it on Magner because he's a mini Nathan Jones and I get the feeling he's a bit of a pest or always peddling something on twitter. That's completely different to attitude and professionalism. I'd say most of his team mates probably like Magner. They certainly would be keen to have him in the side much more than want to keep him out of it. He's not Mitch Morton!

I'm just playing devils advocate but in the 2 games he did play Rich- Ellis 39, Deledio 27, Cotchin 27, Jackson 23 Freo - Mundy 34, Fyfe 32, Barlow 32, C. Pearce 31 Of course none of that is really anything new for us but it seems his main opponents find much more of the footy than he does. On the other hand 6 tackles in both games is a significant achievement

neil Craig - who was apparently Watts' mentor because Neeld treated him poorly got in his ear and we got a few good weeks until the North game and ever since we've been served trash from Watts.The common denominator is that when the team plays well Watts gets on the end of things. When the team struggles he is inept. If Craig isn't senior enough I don't know who is!

He's built well through the season. But is averaging about 20 touches at Casey. Toumpas has gone back and had 28 then 32 touches in the VFL and we all think he's not ready for AFL yet. Makes me think Barry won't be close. Especially watching Barry at training earlier in the year. He often looked like he was struggling in the more technical drills it was like watching an actual kid in an AFL drills, bit like watching the kiwi bloke. Plus why waste our debutants at interstate games! We need something to get excited about for next year. Playing in the NAB cup and see if he can do well enough to sign a few members up.

Why? If that's your credentials I'd have every faith in you to select a coach. If you kept the priorities that you knew worked when you played and coached then you'd pick the right guy. I'm talking about communication skills, focus on what you can control, focus on the fundamentals of footy first. Be a team player, be good at taking responsibility for losses and pumping up players after you win. It's why I'm happy that our coaching selection panel is headed by PJ who has a focus on experience and David Parkin who won't get side tracked by fancy schemes. The only other thing I'd be interested in for a senior coach in their understanding of other aspects of modern footy in terms of drafting, fitness, sports science, media responsibility. As you've seen with Essendon these issues can derail you pretty quickly. I'd say Neeld's drafting and media work contributed to his down fall as well.

Could be worse. Just saw Essendon fans in the crowd wearing Mexican hats mocking their own players sad down fall. Now that's class.

For the last month he's been high up on the stats sheet then dropped off in the second half. Good to see him make a consistent effort and get the 27 touches. I'd like to see him crack 30 in the last 2 matches. I'm still concerned about the virtues of a slow outside player but if he accumulates and runs hard defensively then he's clever enough to contribute. Remember Nathan Jones looked slow for a couple of years there. Then when he started to get really confident he's now incredibly hard to run down. He's learnt all about sidestepping and baulking. Hopefully Trenners gets some initial speed back after the preseason and combined with that confidence a new coach and season can bring can find consistency.

Isn't reported on in the VFL review. I presume he didn't play?

Lyon's defense of him on FC is rubbish. "He started ok then tired" I'm with Matty Lloyd 110%. Called both of those incidents they just showed when I was watching the game as been complete rubbish. I can only imagine what Derm Brereton would say about a Hawk doing the same or Tony Shaw about a pie. They'd probably have the guts to call a spade a spade or in this case a spud a spud.

Yeah but did you notice how many times Viney and Sylvia in particularly got their hands on the ball and tried to get it out but had no one smart or good enough to be in the right spots. Viney had 5 touches early in the first of the teams 9 ie. he hunted the ball and then no one could get on the end of it. Or the number of times Freo won the ball (particularly in the first 3/4) and we tackled and chased and pressured as they handballed around unable to get anywhere then a smart handball went to a Danyle Pearce or other clever outside player in space. As I said I'm all for playing Magner but I can also see why they haven't.

Yeah the quality of the opposition was much different but we were a better team when we had Nicholson and Clisby in and Howe and Blease out ie. some resting midfielders who actually run and chase and find the footy are better than guys who are capable of kicking a freak goal but can't get a kick the rest of the time. Hopefully one of the coaches noticed that. Of course they hope Blease and Howe are big parts of the future but the future won't come if we keep playing guys forward who can't impact games.

In some ways we are even less wise to try things when we need every opportunity to work on the basics ie. best players in the best positions kind of thing. I think that would be Craig's philosophy.

Obviously lacks speed and also doesn't seem able to impact AFL with endurance either ie. doesn't rack up uncontested disposals at AFL level. The first Freo game we got belted when Magner played. This time we went for Jones, Viney, McKenzie, Sylvia predominately with also Grimes and Trengove as the inside midfielders. Put Magner in and you take one of those guys out. Now I'd be happy for Grimes to go back to half back or for Sylvia to play half forward and rotate in to the midfield to give Magner 2 weeks just to see what he can do but I don't hold high hopes. The big questions are: 1. Do you ever think Magner will be AFL standard? 2. Will playing Magner make an impact on the scoreboard ie. will he perform any better than Viney, McKenzie, Sylvia or Grimes do in the midfield If your answer to both those questions is NO then you wouldn't play him if he had 100 possessions. Same for Rodan.

He also talked of his MFC Darwin fishing trips and hanging out with Trotts. Not to mention his business breakfast he sponsored. He is from within the club and corporate society that sometimes get blamed for MFC's failures but also coming from a fresh outlook. He hasn't been gifted in to that bunch due to connections he's legitimately supported the club and I'm sure some of his friends have been there along the way (He mentioned Trotter advising him to join the board) but I'm hoping he brings a fresh set of eyes and isn't tainted by affiliations to different power bases. I liked his stance on using our well connected supporters to help Melbourne attractive to players. It was positive and isn't something to shy away from. We all know Carlton, Coll and Hawthorn in particular are never silent on that issue.