Rogue

It'd be pretty unusual for him to play every game in his first season, even if his form holds up.

The major difference between the Club's membership tallies last year is that North were playing their ace and their membership record was a huge spike which, as predicted by many, has come back to earth. Our membership has been increasing steadily over the past few years with conseuctive record-breaking membership tallies. If you compare our membership with the Roos' pre and post-spike I think it'll look pretty decent. I do think it's a relatively minor point but I brought it up because it shows they're keen enough to buy a MCC membership - it indicates more commitment to footy than 'unsigned supporters'. I'd also suggest that 'unsigned supporters' are more likely to get involved when the team is doing well (ie. prelim recently, premierships in the 90s) and North have failed to lure these supporters into buying a membership. Conversely, we've broken our membership tally record in consecutive years despite performing very poorly. I believe it will only increase as we improve (ie. Hawthorn). How about a couple of years back? You're comparing our figures with what was almost a dead cat bounce for North - of course they're going to look good

Yet another swipe at the other Dees supporters on here, and I think it's a rubbish call. First, some of Y_M's 'opinions' (aka trolls) have received more criticism than all other comments combined. Second, if you're arguing that all criticism of Bruce's recent is because Y_M has espoused a negative view of Bruce for years I'm not sure how you can account for recent criticism of Bruce's form from those not on Demonland (ie. Jason Dunstall). Are you suggesting that Jason Dunstall subscribes to Y_M's twitter feed or something? Someone suggested your tone was condescending not because you raised an opinion (sensical or otherwise) but because you took a personal swipe at another poster. You've also taken swipes at Demonland as a whole, once again suggesting you regard most (all?) others on here as inferior. Diversity of opinion is great - it'd otherwise be a very boring forum. However, personal attacks are not.

It's hardly because they've lost a few games - North have had issues for years. One of the major problems for the Roos is that they've had [one of] the greatest players of his time in Carey, they've had success and premierships in the past few decades (70's and 90's), but where's the benefit built on the back of those successes? Despite our lack of success we have a larger membership base (and far larger if you include all MCC members that support the Dees). North have also played their ace, turning down the Gold Coast carrot to live or die in Victoria, and the white knights with their promised millions have failed to eventuate. Apart from an artificial spike last year, North's call to arms seems to have done nothing for memberships either. In contrast, our Debt Demolition campaign injected significant funds into the footy Club. Despite our poor on-field performance over the past few years we've managed to break our membership record year after year.

Indeed. It's like tossing a coin 10 times and having it land heads up 10 times. The chance of the coin landing tails up on the next flip is 50%.

Haha, brilliant. I hope she takes the prize if you win it

Apparently he's keen to play forward and it does give us a tall target to kick to if we're under pressure. I thought he was leading too early a couple of times on Sunday and I don't know what his goal kicking is like but there's no harm in trying him there.

Stynes used the 3-5 years line a couple of times last year and that timeline fits with my expectation. When do you expect Melbourne to be playing finals?

You certainly don't need to agree with what's written but there's no need to take pot shots at other supporters if you think they have something wrong. In footy terminology, play the ball and not the man. I certainly wouldn't take a cheap shot at you because you incorrectly asserted that Bruce was regarded as 'amongst the best on the field for what they did' in "all the reports, paper, tv, other sites" (Bruce was given 3 votes in the 'bad ones' on MMM).

Fwiw, 'two sheds jackson' acknowledged that point in his first post on the topic.

RR was taking a shot at you for not being able to envisage PJ's delisting - something RR clearly thinks is a possibility.

If Meesen's been 'great' you're very easily pleased. Meesen's been far better than you'd expect from the forum consensus on him, but he's hardly been great! If you wanted to drop Bate and bring in McNamara you'd have Martin replace Bate up forward, leaving a slot in the backline for McNamara.

Approximately 30,275 now.

A few thoughts - Meesen and PJ are lucky that we don't have any rucks pushing for selection. McDonald and Bruce probably have enough credits in the bank but a decent performance would be timely. Given the circumstances, Maric should stay in the team for at least one more game. If Bennell's to come out - as a few have suggested - I think Cheney's the obvious replacement. Dunn and Bate might be in the gun but who do we bring in? I imagine Newton will be given more than a week at Casey and it seems other contenders (Whelan, Wona, Grimes, Bell, etc) need to find form and/or fitness. Wona might have had a great pre-season but he's just coming back from injury and - from all accounts - didn't play well. He's not good enough to walk back into the team.

Except that what you're looking for in the first round of the draft is a young gun. Why would you give away an established young gun to take your chance on a youngster you think is a gun but may not make it?

Fortunately we'll also have pick 2 if we win only a few more games.

I hope Newton can rebuild his goal-kicking confidence at VFL level and then replicate that in the AFL. I'm sure he'll be given further opportunities for Melbourne this year and if he'd dobbed the easy shorts in the past few weeks most would be reasonably happy with his return. Since Watts is a #1 pick I can understand you thinking he's bankable, but Jurrah and an as yet undrafted player? Plenty of room for error there! Haha - wish I saw that. I did hear that there was a big brawl.

PJ needs to find a niche if he wants a lengthy career in the AFL. He's not a '#1' ruck and if he wants to hold down a '#2 ruck' spot in a decent side he needs to add another string or two to his bow. Playing forward seems the obvious option but he hasn't done enough there when he's been given the opportunity. Fortunately for him, our ruck stocks are pretty poor atm.

I can't see why we'd trade pick 2. We'd be looking to draft a star and we need someone who will fit in with our window of flag contention so I can't see it happening.

We don't need to drop players after a poor game on their return to the side and I doubt Maric will be dropped.

As long as you're also directing those barbs at Geelong, who have been the dominant side of the past two years, had a better time and only got ~1K more than us last week.

I'm not sure there are any small grounds in Melbourne up to AFL standard, are there? Stynes comments today seem to indicate that. The competitive disadvantage associated with selling games probably doesn't matter too much now (some might say it'd be a bonus). A neutral ground would be ideal though, if we can find someone to give us moolah for playing there. However, as we get better the prospect of selling games becomes less palatable from a footy perspective. We should also start drawing better crowds, so we shouldn't be writing out cheques.

Define 'not work'. I just tried searching for 'search function' matching username 'mono' and it returned this thread, so it's just worked for me.

Wheatley's not a backman and shouldn't be considered as such - certainly not as a key defender such as Martin. Wheatley's role is more akin to a defensive winger and he's been played further up the ground under Bailey.

Fwiw, I agree. Some new threads should be locked or merged with an existing topic, but not all conversations - and that's what threads are - that relate to a particular topic are taking the same 'angle', so to speak.