Webber

20 goal loss...

You're blaming the players only Sat, but the overwhelming trend coming out of the media analysis since Sunday is the bafflement at how the team is structured and set up. This is purely a coaching issue, and they're all talking about it. Ask yourself why James Frawley is looking so bereft out there, when he was AA 3 years ago. Garland same, Jamar too. There's something seriously wrong with the way these players are being coached. Why were Viney and Matt Jones the only ones who seemed to play with confidence and instinct? Do you think it's a coincidence that they've only been there for a few months. The rest just seem confused and frankly at a loss. They have NO confidence!!!! It just has to be the coaching, and now the best footy experience in the media (Roos, Walls, Etc...) are on to it.

Yep, really suffering. Poor guy.

Did you see yesterday's game Dr. G? It was the MOST unaccountable MFC performance I've ever seen, considering the quality of the opposition. Remember that Port yesterday were younger and less gamed!!!! Pretty much like Neeld's now infamous "hardest club to play against", we have become, more so than with Bailey, the least accountable team in the AFL. Port Adelaide met NO resistance yesterday. We are more unaccountable than ever.....

Exactly.

Agree with all, but remember when both Frawley and Garland had confidence and flair, and we loved seeing them out there. They were good and had the upside of maturity to come. Something has happened in the past 18 months to rob them of that, and I'm bloody sure it's whatever game plan or structures or system or WHATEVER you want to call it. They, and almost the entire team yesterday played without natural instinct, belief or freedom. It's like they've been overcoached, and are second guessing every aspect of their play. This second guessing is like some virus amongst the players, and thus their indecision creates a flat, slow, reactive approach. A literal bonanza of errors. I've said it on other threads, but there is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that whatever is going on with the coaching, it's coaching us to our death!

So you're saying MFC has an exclusive knack for bringing lazy players to the club? Wake up.

Nor is this....

That's NOT evidence of unstable administration.

I hear your frustration Sdemon, but what player do you imagine doesn't want to give 150 % as you call it? It's just froth and bubble nonsense this idea of giving them ultimatums. They get onto AFL lists BECAUSE they have talent AND diligence AND application. Our list is not exceptional in being somehow less prepared to work hard. That's why coaches are there, to ferment those qualities and unify them into a team. Our coach and his staff are just NOT doing that, and ultimatums without inspiration and confidence are just pointless.

Evidence?

We will lose both these games, and the carnage on here, in the media and by public opinion will be brutal. I am nonplussed by those who imagine the board have anything whatsoever to do with how the coaching staff manage the players, prepare for game day, and execute on the day. The truth is that there has been admin stability at the club since the fallout from 186. What we got yesterday is about FOOTBALL, not boards or committees. The players are totally uninspired, devoid of natural competitive instinct ( with precious few exceptions) and have the most woeful lack of confidence. Give it half a dozen games and Jack Viney and Matt Jones will have had all the desire and instinct sucked out of them too. It just HAS to be a coaching issue, and whether Royal is rubbish, or Craig or Rawlings, who knows, but Mark Neeld is the boss cookie, and he has shown ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as a legitimate coach to this point, other than the worst team approach and application to AFL/VFL football since I first saw the Dees in 1971. I remember the consensus on our list when John Northey came was that it was average at best, and what did he do with them? The opposite of Neeld. So it's not that our players are born unskilled, unsure, or timid, or that the board are somehow infecting them, it's the way they are COACHED!!!!!!!!

The problem is that this 'line in the sand' idea, where the club shuts itself away, or tells harsh truths, or puts players on notice, or does whatever to use the disgrace of the loss to provide some sort of motivation for a 'hard' uncompromising team to roll out next week just has NEVER worked. We've been disgraceful like yesterday numerous times in the past 7 years, then make apologies to the supporters, change the team around for the following week, and the result is......... another thumping. I know it's a football era of systems, and science, and method, and training loads, but EVERY successful coach in AFL/VFL history has been a leader of men, someone who can bring the individual and the unified best out of his team. It is clear that Mark Neeld has a complete inability to motivate his players in the face of adversity. In a full season and 1 game, Neeld's MFC have NOT ONCE shown that kind of inspirational unity. Yes, I know the 'inspirational' coach is a frustratingly airy fairy and intangible thing, but whatever it is, I have never felt it so utterly lacking at a football club. Nobody could have predicted it when Mark Neeld came to the club, and I dont even think he or anybody else is to blame, but his lack of game day facility to inspire is simply going to drive this club further toward oblivion. It is just not logical to blame the players en masse. With draft equalisation and salary cap evening of the competition, it is simply not sensible to blame a gulf in skills or fitness for our unequalled game day ineptitude and lack of intensity. IT IS THE COACHING!

No.

I don't see how we won't be relocated, absorbed or just cease to be.....oblivion awaits it seems.

Hard to see how they will not be a 5 goal better team each quarter, so 20 goals loss would be the estimate. The MFC will set a new low percentage record this year, and we will not win a game. Neeld will resign by round 13, and the future existence of our club will be the talking point of the AFL. This could actually happen. This club has been so woefully and consistently mismanaged for the requirements of AFL football over the past 8 years, it just defies understanding. You can all talk about pre-existing culture as the problem, but this has been recognised within the club, because EVERYONE outside the club has talked about it. To fail so repeatedly and comprehensively to do anything about it is now the new story, and make no mistake, the media are going to run hard with it. They smell blood, and I truly fear it will be the end of this club in the form that we know it. It happened to South Melbourne and Fitzroy when the media were much less frenzied, and now it's happening to us.....

More than anything, this all reminds of Fitzroy pre folding, and the swans pre- Sydney...... I have a horrible feeling the Melbourne football club is playing themselves out of existence. It sounds extreme I know, but there is precedent, and we are quite simply nowhere, with NOTHING to give us ANY hope as a club. Sure, Jack Viney was great, and there is value and promise in some of our list, but this is a team game, and a club competition, and our club is truthfully uncompetitive. The AFL won't tolerate it, because in the end, professional sport is commerce, and we are a few steps closer to being properly recognised as a commercial liability. We MAY be soon a thing of history.....

Tricky stuff, some tough decisions for the selectors! *I reckon based on preseason form, Sellar HAS to get a spot. He's averaged more than 3 goals a game, which is a really good season return if he matches it through the season. Pederson? Not really much to recommend him yet. *Jetta has been in our best preseason when he's played. He's fit, firing, and Neeld likes him. A shoe in I'd say. *Like him or not, so has James Magner. Hard and in form. Hard to ignore. Competing with Matt Jones probably, but I think they'll go with AFL experience for round 1. *Terlich has been mentioned a lot by Neeld and others....have a hunch he'll be there. *Dean Kent looks like a great prospect, if maybe a bit underdone for a full game. Might depend on Blease being ready. BRING. IT. ON.

Nice read wmth. Kudos.

Schrodinger had the cat Josh, Heisenberg had an uncertainty principle. And in principle I am very uncertain about how we'll go this season!

Egan and particularly Croad had fractures. Croad's was a Lisfranc dislocation WITH a fracture of the metatarsals. Disaster!!! And he had warning signs of stress leading into the GF, but the decision was to inject him up and take the risk. It ended badly. Not sure whether Egan was navicular or other.

This is not to say he won't be subject to arthritic change as the years go by (after he's retired ideally!), changes in the burden on other joints in the area, and altered mechanics of the foot and ankle. Yes, other players have suffered the same injury, notably Richo, and had full normal careers after.

Exactly.

The career killer is that it never stands up to the demands of weight bearing.....running, jumping, landing. That is, that it never gets this far.

On topic, it's great to hear that Mitch is playing this weekend. His Lisfranc can be a career killer, so he's now in the clear. For those of you worried about repeat injury, Lisfranc dislocations don't recur with any greater incidence in previous sufferers. I expect to see him round 1. Good work to Mark Blackney his surgeon, and the rehab team.....particularly the physios. I might be biased, haha.