Curry & Beer

in fact I must be Prime Minister of Australia - I am not going to actually do anything just the title and the paycheck

thanks all for the reports, some really pleasing things coming up - does anyone know when the next open training session will be when they get back? I'm going to get down there

he probably told the club they are not paying him enough for the extra responsibility.. if you want me to captain I want 14 million dollars a year

yeah yeah but that's what people said about the early years of McLean, Sylvia and Morton.. these players never became the elite midfielders they were supposed to be. Just because some other kid at some other club, at some other stage of history came good after a few years has absolutely nothing to do with Trengove

yeah probably better off not writing somebody's life story when they are in their early 20's.. just in case the person goes on to become an attempted axe murderer who craps all over the club that gave him his shot

most of us here followed football before the age of beep tests and altitude training and ice vests and all the rest of the sports science garbage that dominates the conversation of modern football. It used to be a matter of knowing where to be and how to get the football, having the balls to go and get the football and having the skills to use the football properly. These are the factors that make good footballers, if you don't believe that go and have a track and field event with Morton and Gysberts

just sayin what? that you know better than the highly-paid elite fitness people at the club?

i believe Paul Roooooos was the original

my immediate impulse was to call the kid 'thumper'

Brock McLean donated 50k how's that for loyalty? A short time later things didn't go his way and he was sticking a red hot poker right up us. Burgundy, perhaps you and I possess the virtue of loyalty but I highly doubt there are many of these young 'rock stars' who would give the slightest toss about the red and blue next to a paycheck. The Judd move served as an official precedent for every player since to act as ruthlessly as necessary in the name of coin. It's sad but true.

OK so not a champion - but you are saying these superstars will 'come along' just curious, if our no.2 pick and vice-captain is not one of them, who is?

It's already been said ad nauseum but your comments are as blindly misplaced as the comments have been for every non-champion that has taken the field for us over the last few decades - one hell of a long list with almost no exceptions

not really much difference in any of the cases, obviously a player cannot let it be known that he is planning to jump ship while he is still running around for his current club. In all cases the player played out a charade of pretending to be 'concentrating on his footy and working out his future at season's end' all the while the deals were done and dusted behind closed doors. If you think there is any motivation whatsover apart from money, ie. 'Melbourne's facilities' for Judd, or a a 'new challenge' for Ablett you are absolutely kidding yourself

of course Trengove would have taken it, they all would. Ablett, Judd etc they would all punch out their own mothers for an extra buck. Loyalty is for the supporters

to say Trengove is on par with Murphy and Cotchin is just blatently incorrect.

since I am the one who opened the 'we can't make champions' can of worms, can I just say this - even if we go ahead and count Neitz, Stynes, Lyon and Flower, that's 4 blokes in 40 years. In 2008 the cats had 7 players in the AA side, how far away from that are we, James Frawley is the only AA player on the list, who has made it once in 6 years. My point is that it is indisputable that there is something wrong with our process of developing young footballers, even when we have access to the highest quality draftees. Watts and Trengove are the latest examples, we need them to become genuine champions or we will remain also-rans, simple as that

I can't believe you are STILL singing this idiotic tune. How many coaches and recruiting staff have come and gone, are you saying they all shared the inability to select talented kids. How unlucky are we then? I suppose in 5-10 years you will be looking back and saying we stuffed up taking Toumpas at 4, even though he was an absolute lock as was Cale Morton when he came at 4. It is obviously a development problem not a recruiting problem

well no, an All-australian player is in about the top 3% of all listed players, if you do that in 5 or more seasons you are a champion.. I should have included Harvey who has 8 selections and Scott West who has 5. Stynes got 2 and he retired 15 years ago.

yes i enjoyed all that mark riccuito - 8 x all-australian james hird - 5 x all-australian nathan buckley - 7 x all-australian ben cousins - 5 x all-australian chris judd - 6 x all-australian these are champion players. Exc. Buckley, who was runner-up twice, the rest delivered premierships can you put aside the emotion you feel from a fellow supporter expressing a negative view to look at the truth. To pretend that I don't know what I'm talking about or that I am not a true demon is jut your self-defence mechanism kicking in. do you realise that in the entire time all those players were consistently performing we had just TWO players even MAKE the side, that is Neitz and McDonald, twice each. That's why we spent the 2000s being pretenders at best. Those clubs had elite performers that led their sides to glory. even gifted with the best talent in the land over the last 6 drafts we do not have a player anywhere near the calibre of those listed above. Our only strong contenders at the moment for star players are Clark and Jones, neither of whom has a CV in the same stratosphere as the aforementioned players. The reason is partially to do with money, but more to do with the fact we are one of the loser clubs with a poor culture. It has nothing to do with choices we made on draft night but the fact that our machine is incapable of producing star players. Our optimism rests solely on yet another coach, with yet another list, as we near a half-century without success. If you disagree, bump this thread when Jack Trengove, or Watts, or Viney, has 5 all-australian achievements. again, i am not pretending to make any forecast about where we are headed, i am just stating the obvious truths as they are it sucks, i hate it, but its the truth.

like McLean, Sylvia, Morton, Scully and Watts has not yet become the champion player expected with a top5 pick there has not been a champion player in red and blue since Stynes and Lyon were running around now we can add Viney, Toumpas and Hogan to that list with a minimum 5 year waiting period we continue our endless wait

except that's not what it was about, it was not a forecast in any way, but an assessment of the situation at the time in any case, we have lost an experienced player for every kid that was supposed to mature. We obviously weren't helped by half of them turning out to be duds. i'm sure if I did the same thing now you'd probably find our average experience still matches our ladder position as it did then

OK but I never said anything like that

Mate that is EXACTLY what I have been saying. Jeez some people here just like to argue don't they? I'm not forecasting anything either way, if I was able to do that I wouldn't need to work any more because I'd be down at the TAB claening up. All I'm saying is can we please wait until we have actually done something before celebrating

you mean the post that was so celebrated it was forever stickied to the top of the board? Yeah that was me

I remodelled the Grinter Award system a few years back, so that voting worked by allocating as many as 12 votes to as few or multiple players depending on how you weighted their performances and who (if any) deserved votes at all. It also took into account EVERYONE's votes. If you were a traditionalist you could give 3-2-1 and it would simply count as 6-4-2 in the 12 vote system.