Arrow

Funny, has happened at Melbourne quite a bit too haha. I hold more hope for O'Rourke than Plowman, but he's one of those classic players who isn't enough of a ball winner ala Greene to find his own footy at AFL Level, yet doesn't have speed or an enormous tank to spread at the next level either. He seems to post good numbers in the NEAFL comp, yet I don't find his actual output particularly damaging. If we could get him for pick 30-40 I'd be all for it, I think there's something there.. But from what he's shown so far, just don't think he'd be worth a Rd 1 draft pick.

Are they? They were picked high, but I've yet to see any video to suggest they are more than average footballers. The high end talent in that draft looking bad seems very poor and some blokes who fell in the draft really shouldn't have. I watch GWS every week, and regularly follow the UWS team as I have a friend playing for them and if we think getting one of these two would be comparable to getting another Tyson, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Congratulations Matt. He's moved on from football, and it's time we did the same as well. I'm certain he'll have days that'll lead to great regret about having to leave behind the greatest sport in the world, but it's also the reason he is in the battle he faces at the moment. It appears from the outside that photography brings him his greatest joy in life, and if that's the case he'd be stupid to come back to footy. Thanks for the memories Mitch, but I'm happy if we move our resources to another area rather than wooing him back into football.

God, not another one of these posters around the joint. It always seems to be the one's regularly belittling other posters, that find it necessary to send a private message on why you don't agree with them.. The world's a funny place.

Quick pat on the back to us, I've been thinking about it the last few days but **** we actually do have a committed supporter base. Last year Rd 21, all hope lost, no reason to attend and destined to lose by 100+ points 14,000 showed up against Fremantle to see us get spanked. We got 20,000 to the GWS game too. North Melbourne are meant to be Top 4 and can garner only 37,000 members. Our average attendance this year is 31,000 and we've played games against GWS, GC, Sydney at home. NM a finals contender and WB (self-assessed team on the rise) have averages of 27 and 29k respectively. It grinds my gears to hear other teams call us fair weather supporters when years and years of rubbish and we've sat through it. So proud of our supporters and finally we are reaping the rewards.

Yesterday night I ran into a player who played in the game against Coburg. Having read what Welsh supposedly said, I asked him if he rated Welsh as a coach. He said 'yeah, great coach and even better bloke.' I was surprised and obviously by my look he asked me why I had asked. I responded with the remarks that were reported and whether they were on the mark. He went on to tell me that it was far from how the post match address went. It was clear possession wise that MFC players are the most important figures at Casey, and most influential in winning games, however on the weekend they produced 27 tackles between them I'm led to believe. 6 by Jordie McKenzie. Casey are in a development year and lost 3 of their best 4 players to other VFL/EFL clubs and they were the lynch-pin to the club. Everyone down there understands that, as do the Melbourne coaching staff he explained. He said the only remark Welsh made re. Demons players after game was that during the week he had players ask him what they were doing that was preventing them from playing AFL.. He said look at Paul's gameplan.. You need to be defensive orientated or you will not get a game. The listed player than produced 27 tackles between them, which defensively is appalling. I can't remember if there was a remark to those effects in his interview but it sounds to me like Welsh is dead-set on the money. Don't head back to Casey padding your stats. Play AFL style footy or else you won't get picked up.. Developing year of not half a team of listed footballers should not lose to a first year standalone side in Coburg. If he's not [censored] off at that as a coach, he never will be. I don't know Rohan personally, nor do I have any involvement with Casey whatsoever, but the last 5 pages have been incredibly slanderous based on nothing but media hearsay. Whether he is a good coach or not will be assessed at the end of the year, but let's put this bad coach, bad bloke mantra away for the remaining 3 months because it's simply not correct.

Ripper win. Took my girlfriend and she judged me hard by my barracking but at the final siren I couldn't have been happier. Other supporters won't get how much more than 4 points than that it means, but I'm so stoked. Go the bloody Dees

I think the timing was the worst part about it Old Dee. If we were off 3 premierships, I think we'd all love it, it did look somewhat classy at official events but the fact we couldn't get within 100 points and we spending time designing official blazers was the problem. We were accused of bruise free footy and it was another example of poor vision by our board and decision makers. Personally though, I'm with Cards.. Don't hate the design, just hate the bad memories that blazer resembles.

He was terrible. Directly caused 3 goals to them with rushed poor decisions and shirked two howling marks where he had to go. Wet weather isn't his thing, but he was pathetic. Toumpas didn't get as much cheap footy but his endeavour was there all game.

Northern kick first of the second half and as much as the sun has come out, conditions certainly aren't improving.

One of the worst games of football ever here. Tim Smith from Casey has kicked I think 5 or 6 now though. Very good. Blease disappointing turnover moments ago to gift them a goal. Can't seem to see Clisby either and I noted Gawn is being held over. May be a few changes tonight. No players starring given the conditions but McKenzie's had a few touches and Toumpas seems to be trying hard in the contested situations and even started a blue.

Strauss playing forward WJ? Someone said he trained with the forwards during the week.

Brereton said something on SEN in regards to it, that all the old blokes at Hawthorn used to smile at the bloke they were about to throw a swing at. Journalism at it's worst when they start saying his smiling is equating to his bad footy etc etc.

One of the best things about Salems goal was the fact every single player in the team got around him after he kicked it. It used to make me sick that when we were losing by 100 points our new boys would kick a goal and noone would even high 5 him. It's a great sign of the change in culture at the club. Players are playing for one and other again.

A real leader would've dug his heels in and forced a change in culture. He's a pathetic sell-out.

The poor tackles and lackadaisical approach by Watts is one thing, but the fact he handballs off in the back line and instead of shepherding for his teammate, waltzes off to try and get an easy handball back makes it the worst. It makes me sad to say it, but he's just not a footballer. I'm sick of telling friends he'll be something and he repaying us by offering this crap.

Wasn't sure where to post this. Recently saw that new members were given $100 New Balance vouchers. I'm in the market for a new pair of runners and I figure why not go with the brand that sponsor my blokes. The point of my post is if someone is signing up for one but has no interest in using the voucher I'd happily take it off your hands for $50 or the likes, that way money back in your pocket and I get my runners slightly cheaper. If anyone is interested, just PM me. Thanks, Arrow.

Positives and Negatives a plenty for yesterday's game. I'll get the bad out of the way. It beggars belief that Spencer can play so well against Warnock, 210 cm and a solid unit, than get beaten comprehensively by a stick figure in Nicholls. 1 mark in perfect football conditions.. I love Jake's attitude but it's not good enough to turn up once every few weeks. Evans offered nothing as a sub. Georgiou for the first time was soundly beaten. I don't know for sure but I'm led to believe Terlich was on Brandon Matera who ran rings around him. He's an average footballer who was made to look brilliant with the weak defending he was up against. I'm very keen on Dean having a few weeks to work on his defensive mechanics at Casey, before bringing him back in to test at AFL level. Watts was average and Tyson looked burnt out. A week off training might give him the energy boost he needs. Still important. If I notice one thing about Dom it's that he regularly shows little awareness. I like that he tries to play on after a mark but far too often it's with someone already on his back. Just a bit of poise is the difference between him being an accumulator and an A-grade midfielder. Positives: Melbourne of old would've lost that game by 50 points. It's impressive to see them continue to go from 19 points down back to 13 in the 4th quarter, and continue to put pressure on. Sadly we just didn't have the finesse to put them to the sword. Dawes is showing his worth, and god Frawley is by far our second best player. I was questioning his ability in the backline for the last 12 months, but he's clearly enjoying his football and whether he stays or goes I'll respect James for always giving his all for the Dees. Nathan Jones is a bloody gun. I love the guy. He moves on a dime and his ability to skip in between players is elite. Bernie Vince was off, his disposal wasn't his normal self but he still had 22 touches. We'd have killed for that last year! Jack Viney was great, he's a clearance machine. At one point he won a clearance over Ablett just by going low and wanting the footy more. I feel like Roos' gameplan is starting to take place with the players but there's so many bit players who need to do more. Obviously I don't want all of these gone this week but the following aren't deserving of AFL football at THIS point in time: Bail, Evans, Spencer, Terlich, Jetta. McKenzie, M Jones and Pederson have week reprieves after previous good weeks but also need monitoring.

And don't let stats misguide you. His decision making is rubbish and stands out like a sore thumb in a team desperate for good ball users. He'll be playing 2s within the month.

Trengove set to miss rest of 2014 season Unfortunate news for Jack. Hopefully the full year off will see him running hard next year. Geez we have no luck with navicular bones.

After the Mal Michael farce, it is now standard to sign a clause that won't allow you to play for 2-3 years unless it is at the same club. I'm certain Melbourne would enforce that rule. Regardless, I feel like Clark sees Melbourne as home now anyway.

The meeting was in regards to that. He will accept a far smaller payment as a payout, however I'm led to believe the money will still count to the salary cap. That said given the issues resulting in the retirement, you'd hope they'd make an exception.

Can I suggest a better idea would be to than take the final leaderboard as 6-1 for the weeks votes. I feel that's a far better indicator than 3 random sets of votes. AKA for this week it would be Tyson 6, Jones 5, Dunn 4, Watts 3, Howe 2 and McDonald 1 (as he garnered more BOG's). You've got a system that works, so I'm sure you're the best to judge, but just an idea

Matt Jones as our best player was probably the best indicator that he bases his post-game write-ups on stats not vision. Journalism is a sorry industry these days. They wonder why we don't pay for the paper anymore...

Quote name="hogans heroes" post="902452" timestamp="1396528462"] I remember pre draft Emma Quayle saying that if Melbourne take Wines, he and Viney will be causing explosions at the centre square for the next 12 years What a massive stuff up this was by the recruiting staff