Webber

RIP Sean Wight.....gutsy to a fault, exciting to the max, just a great player to have in the team you support. And with Jimmy, a TRUE pioneer. Too soon, too sad.

Whoever we get as compensation for Scully B)

Speaking of Jack, anyone see the kudos on him for Vic Metro this weekend? He's looking very very likely.

Very true what you say about McClure, but he has a woeful lack of complexity in his assessments, and inability to account for context. He frequently holds onto his 'no shades of grey' opinions like a dog with a bone, whereupon the game will play out in a way that contradicts his absolutism, and he flips like a dying fish. Week to week he is the most self-contradicting commentator out there. There's a strange attraction in listening to this though, kind of a nice balance to Stan Alves sycophantic hyperbole.

It's an opinion.....as the end of the paragraph would suggest. Go easy friend. B)

Brilliant footy, he drew the player, feinted to go himself, drew the player again, then put it into Ricky's hands........delicious! (apologies to Bruce McAvaney)

6. Watts 5. Martin 4. Moloney 3. Howe 2. McKenzie 1. Scully Apologies to Nicho, Sylvia, Green, Frawley, and others.

He's a classic low left footer, but I did see him nail a 30m right foot pass today as well....good work Nicho.

I beg you, and anybody else on here, not to quote Drew Morphett! He is the most monumental muppet of a commentator, I just CANNOT understand how he gets a gig. And he has been for 30 or whatever years. He brings no insight, no quality, and is woefully glib..... rubbish of the highest order!!!!!!!!!

We can't beat the Tigers.....they are harder, and our inability to move the ball efficiently forward out of our 50 against any of the sides perceived to be at our level, or above us, is a killer. They will apply a lot of pressure and muscle in the middle and in our back half, and we will [censored] ourselves again, providing a bevy of turnovers. I wish it were otherwise, but today's game was a doddle against a team with 4 of their best 5 out, then losing their in form forward before the game, then left with a 2 man bench after halftime. Today was the very definition of an easy kill, and sadly I think it does nothing but give us a false sense of our own form................then again, anything can happen, but it would be a major upset, for mine. The Good : Further great signs from Watts, Martin, Howe (he's the dog's nuts, this boy), Maximus Gawn, and Dan Nicholson The Bad : That this game tells us close to nothing, and Clint Bartram. The Ugly : The endless repetition on 774 of how sad it is that Freo haven't got Sandilands et al, and the once or twice Jamar cracked a mention. Not ONE word about Grimes, Davey, or Tapscott however. Just proves that the media are happy to be selective apologists.

post of the year.......particularly this week

The idea of Jeremy Howe at full forward a la Jack Riewoldt is interesting.....could work. His leap will compensate for his height. Jack Watts is really tricky, I think he will become a player who has it all. When his endurance begins to peak in 3 or 4 years, and you combine his speed, physicality, marking and kicking ability, you pretty much want him everywhere. Will be interesting to see

'Ripping into' Artie is precisely what you are doing WYL, and I think of you as being one of the more aggressive, personality attacking posters on here, hence your telling someone to 'shut up'...woefully arrogant stuff. Why is it you are so vitriolic? You seem to be one of those people who are completely unconscious of the fact that alternative opinions to yours don't automatically make them wrong. Opinions are NOT agenda's, they're points of view. This agenda rubbish you speak of is a kind of paranoid madness. Live and let live WYL, we're not all out to get each other.

Correct.....how he was left 50m in the clear.....twice, just beggars belief! Train wreck coaching.

+1 Whingeing rubbish.....beginning to sound like the ignorant Collingwood supporters behind me yesterday. Go hard and be first for the ball, get free kicks. Bad decisions abound no doubt, but they even up in the end.

+1. It's precisely the kind of way too heavy expectation that says JW needs to rip it up against Collingwood that sees him pilloried for not being a superstar already! He is more than holding his spot now, and continues to improve almost weekly, yet he is expected I suspect by a lot here, to be best on ground against last year's premiers. Give the kid some breathing room FFS. He's good and getting better.

Except of course that his physicality and willingness to use it is FAR better than Jurrah's. His tackling and shepherding were outstanding on Friday. To be fair to LJ, his willingness to use his body is getting better, and he's not just getting flicked off the ball like fluff in any contest. It's very exciting to imagine what these two might be like together as time goes on.

Martin Flanagan is not just the best football writer there is, but one of the best full stop. Love reading his stuff, footy or not. If only it were more the likes of he and John Harms that garnered the attention of the football reading world, not Mark Robinson and Mike Sheahan.

66,666.....the number of the DEMON!!!!!!!1

+1. Despite the lashings of paranoid negativity and horrible squealings about the 'ORIGINAL' club (proto-British elitism at its finest) not being able to play off for a premiership in any given year, there WILL be a divisional separation of the AFL in the future. Given that there will be a Tasmanian team and an ACT team at some point not too distant, a 20 team competition becomes unworkable based purely on the dilemmas of fixturing and dead rubbers. That will NOT generate interest in games and won't foster patronage, sponsorship, and general growth of the game. It's simply a stagnant approach to a changing competition. The AFL has put in place the best systems of interclub fairness of any elite sporting competition in the world, being the national draft, the salary cap, and division of profits (outside the home game gate receipts system). In fact, they even financially assist clubs where needed, and strangely enough, we have benefited. So I suspect they're not out to bury us, or North Melbourne, or Port Adelaide, or whoever. Whether we like/hate Demetriou and his tribunal mangling minion Anderson, it is an impressively democratic sporting competition. It is clear this 2 tier idea has provoked a polarity of opinions, but I think the detractors are being emotionally driven by our own club's poor showing over the past 45 years, and the not unfounded fear that we will lose touch with the more successful clubs and continue to be starved of success. Lack of success will do that to you. That emotion directs itself to the AFL, who somehow become responsible for wanting to keep us (and other non-successful clubs) down. This is paranoid conspiracy theory nonsense. It is pure logic for the AFL to want more clubs, which represent the broadest scope of this country, and to do EVERYTHING they can to fertilise support for each and EVERY one of these clubs. I think it is the best approach, and is exciting to watch it unfold, particularly GWS! They would look back on the loss of Fitzroy with some regret for this reason. They know that the larger percentage of Fitzroy supporters lost the passion for the game borne of loyalty, and by implication more gate receipts, and they will not want to repeat that. The two-tier system that Brendan Schwab has devised will anger a lot of people, as shown here, but these people will NOT stop supporting their clubs. In total honesty, how many posters here would stop supporting the Demons because we found ourselves in tier 2?, as that is the worst scenario that can come from this idea. You're in tier 2. What happens then? You get higher draft picks, the salary cap means you won't get all your best players stolen (and that's what the salary cap ensures), and you have a fresh chance of being promoted that year. EVERY year. And when you're in tier 1, you have a better chance of winning the flag. If the cap/draft/profit share system proves nothing else, it is that you create a rotation of success through the competition, and whilst not ALL clubs win the premiership during their rotation, they will all get the best possible opportunity. I love the Melbourne Football Club, and it deserves this opportunity. Some of us on here believe Schwab's system would do nothing to damage this opportunity, some of us don't. Vive le difference!

In fact, if you look back at Schwab's plan, 12th puts you in the promotion/relegation playoffs. Something I didn't understand at first. The more I look at it, the fairer and smarter the idea looks. I reckon we should get the Schwab brothers together at MFC.

You're forgetting that 10th in tier 2 gets you promoted, so it doesn't eliminate Geelong does it?

Making the grand final is not winning it. So Adelaide then, that's it? My club would be far from irrelevant to me if I felt they were a chance to be promoted that year. Would they to you? Really? Do you think we will win the flag this year? Of course you don't, and don't give me the idea that it's the 'possibility' we will, cos that would be BS. Are we irrelevant based on the fact that we won't win the flag this year? You write with passion about this club, so I suspect not.

Hahaha.....interesting ideas. I seriously doubt the AFL will change the points of difference which this game has, and the length of the game is a biggie, as is the scoring system. In the context of the draft and salary cap, can you explain to me how the relegation promotion system will kill the lesser clubs?

Again, all based on a team winning the flag from 10th or lower the previous year. You're talking about if's and maybe's, when the 'chances' you speak of are as rare as hen's teeth. If older players move to tier one clubs, they leave big salary opportunities for younger guns who develop to put the team in a promotion/flag winning position at the tier 2 club, and the cycle goes round. This is the point. The cycle of rise and fall will occur under Schwab's system almost exactly as it does now. There may be the loss of a 'freakish' premiership from a 10th or lower team the previous year, but that's a small price to pay for more a competition where there is much more at stake every week....bigger crowds, more gate revenue, more tv revenue.....it's a winner.