Rogue

I think this is a fair call.

Fair call; it's ridiculous that this can be an excuse for such a terrible performance. Maybe you missed my point. You put down the reported complaints from the playing group down to senior players worried about their career and so forth. However, one of the oft reported players unhappy about the reported 'meddling' is Scully, a second year player with a 4-5 year contract on the table. This indicates that the complaints can't be put down to senior players feeling insecure, and thus is a hole in your theory. For what it's worth, no one's going to argue that there's no problem with our senior players, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the plausability of your theory.

Massive smokey, considering he's said he doesn't want to Coach (and the fact his son is coming to the Club).

Agreed.

Ah yeah, sure. Tom McDonald has been in the mix so I thought you might have meant him; I think he's an emergency this week. I definitely think that their competitive attitude is going to be good for us, and it signals to the rest of the squad that we want to see competitors.

Each to their own, but can we please keep that type of stuff in the [now multitude] of Scully threads? (In case clarification is necessary, my comment had nothing to do with whether Scully is staying or leaving; it was a rebuttal to the assertion that it's the senior players on their last contract who are reportedly unhappy with CS and co).

So that's why Bate didn't get the handball in the goal square? I jest, but it's certainly a plan that could create the wrong types of incentives. This isn't a problem is the metrics are relative to the MFC cohort (ie. top 5% of x, top n finish in best and fairest), rather than either absolute or relative to the entire competition (ie. n handballs, n Brownlow votes).

Speculation that doesn't fit with the oft-reported suggestion that Scully is one who is unhappy with Schwab's reported meddling.

Why Viney? I don't know the guy, and have never played under or worked alongside him, so I can only comment based on reputation/CV. However, on that basis there are a bunch of assistants ahead of him. I am certain I read or heard Lyon say that he didn't want to ever be involved in choosing a Coach again; or at least that I read or heard that it was reported that Lyon had such feelings.

Isn't the White Maggot a satire site like The Onion? I hope not, because otherwise you're proposing that the work of comedians is evidence. Anyway... I'm not trying to say anything; just clarifying the post you quoted, since you seemed to overlook some key words when making your reply. However, I'll bite anyway. He doesn't owe it to the Club and fellow players to make a decision before the end of the season, just like the Clubs don't 'owe it' to their players to tell them before the end of the season that they're getting delisted etc. It works both ways.

Yeah, he was phenomenal in the last quarter of that game last year. I think it was a wet night at the 'G. That would be alright; Bartram is a competitor and it'd be interesting to see McDonald play. I also wouldn't mind seeing MacDonald return; similar reasons to Bartram.

Emphasis on 'or agreed...'.

I can't see Malthouse, Roos or Clarkson ending up at Melbourne next year, so if you want someone who has coached at senior level it comes down to Eade, Laidley or Williams IMO. There are reasonable concerns over all three, and I don't know that they'd necessarily be better than one of the more highly rated senior assistant coaches around at the moment.

This, and the diabolical in-fighting that occurred at his time at Port, worries me.

That settles it.

Source?

Would players that the Club hasn't re-signed be justified in giving the Club an ultimatum to re-sign them now or they're 'pissing off'?

I've consistently said that I think Jones is likely to get pushed out if we develop a very good midfield.

I think his disposal has been better this year; probably correlated with the fact he's spending more time out on the wing, with less pressure than in the centre square.

McLardy said that the Geelong game was a mirror of our Club. Just thought it was worth noting.

My reading of the post is that it's a criticism of the justification provided by the OP. The OP doesn't even attempt to argue that McDonald is the best person to be our football Director or midfield development coach. Instead, the rationale is based on Club unity.

You might have noted that I was focussing on the assertion that we need to focus not on the 'leadership group' to fix out leadership problems, but instead on the Coach. It's a different point than just 'the leadership group we have now sucks', and warren dean's post (post #2) didn't mention Matthews' appeal for an 'authoritarian coaching style'. A closer look at the thread shows that Rusty Nails mentions this point, but much of the discussion following on from that post has continued debating changes to the players within the leadership group, rather than the Matthews suggestion that we should be putting the leadership focus elsewhere. Ahem, .

I was at the game and dispute that estimate; where you there? What do you think?

Matthews has written an article on afl.com.au in which he criticises our leadership as being to blame for the number and magnitude of the big losses we've had. I think that's a fair call. He goes on to assert that we need to put the leadership focus on the Coach, rather than the players, because the players aren't up to scratch in that regard: http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/120035/default.aspx

The 2:1 prediction from hangon was bad enough, but 4:1? Honestly? Ridiculous. For some context, 47K were there for our Friday night home game versus Carlton earlier in the year.