Chook in Perth

Football clubs are made up of a myriad of size, shapes and personalities. Watts isn't a bash and crash merchant prone to getting into dick measuring push and shoves. He's not programmed that way for the simple fact that he has beaten every opponent his whole life with skill and athleticism. I don't want him to change. I want him to keep thinking he's better than everyone else. If I wanted a faux tough guy I'd go down the beach for a chat with Phil Read.

Martin needs to wise up quick smart and sort things out. I've heard that despite his intelligence, he's a dumb footballer. Can't or won't take instructions and takes criticism poorly. He doesn't get Neeld's game plan - runs into the wrong positions and brings his opponent into play too often. If the season ended now he'd be on the trade table.

Got this in an email from an 'Ologist this morning: I went to an after match last night as a representative of the QLd Demons. Towards the end of the night I approached Nathan Jones.I asked him why he was so incensed when Grimes was bowled over. He looked at me right in the eyes and I thought oh fark I’ve upset him. He said, "It was late and he is my captain. The flag had to be flown." I told him its been a long time since I have been prouder of a Melbourne player. He said thanks and shook my hand.

What Neeld is teaching the layman in the outer is you can't have too many good players. The football fan culture is to pigeon hole blokes as A or B, if there's too many A's they must play in the twos. Thats clearly crap. Having Garland and Rivers forward didn't come about by accident like Rohde and Grinter going forward in 1993 when Lyon, Schwarz and the Peoples Champion were injured. Garland and River are playing forward because the FD believe in Tom McDonald and are giving the kid a chance to shine. They targeted James Sellar as a gorilla keeper in a weak draft and he's repaying them with bloody hard work. Identifying Watts as the best user of the ball in the team and a great play reader allows these moves to happen. So Neeld and co shouldn't be applauded for swinging dour defenders forward with success. They should be applauded for putting the building blocks in place to allow the experiment to work and, if anything, enhance the backline. Sellar/Frawley/Nicholson, Watts/McDonald/???? is young, talented and potentially outstanding.

He played about 75 decent games and was a battler by the time he was 27. Setting the "gun" bar that low is part of the reason we've been wading in mediocrity for 3 generations.

Mercado at his best. The technicolour Gawn story I heard was that the dead eyed teetotaller was asleep in bed and big Max came into the room 3 sheets, lost his bearings and unleashed 10 pints on him. What happened after that is the stuff of legend, fables and fantasy, but I'd love to know.

Ah the old multi dimensional talls. When Ronny first started banging on about MDT's(tm TGR 2006) he used to reference Freo as the standard, with Daniel Gilmore as his exhibit A. that ended well.

Really?? So everytime someone wants to start a thread you expect them to find out if someone else has had the same thoughts previously? What expiry date do you put on the validity of a thread? 3 months? 6 months? 5 years? Good luck with that. Always enjoy the irony of posters who complain about threads getting started, but feel the need to post ad nauseum in every thread, only rarely offering anything of substance.

But you're happy to spend your time defending the club against the great unwashed on Big Footy. I don't get it. I'm a fan - you and I see footy through the same eyes and I enjoy your turn of phrase. But hanging out on the Polls Board debating the merits of Mitch Clark and Tyrone Vickery?? Obviously I read that stuff from time to time, but get involved in posting? eff me.

But I don't feel like its our place to bag anyone on this site. Like that punter who started the thread about Magner being a liability. He'd be cactus starting a thread like that over the road. Besides, Mikey will show up eventually and I'll want to commit violent crimes.

Big Footy is definitely TNA. Home of the battler, idiot and the washed up. (and Supermercado).

Interesting that quite a few of us have made the leap and are posting here daily. It reminds me of the end of WCW, after it was bought out by the WWE. Most of the talent went to the new product - [censored] whats the alternative?? Of course TGR will be like Sting and will never be seen in the merged product.

Suspect the pasting Garry gave him on MMM, combined with Dermie's fairy bread analogy may have prompted the piece. The anecdotes are tenuous at best, but I don't think it was that bad an article. You reap what you sow, and Cale's producing paper mache.

Things have down hill since 2007 when you were a published writer at the Herald Sun.

I agree. At the very least he could hand over the ownership temporarily. I could help with the hosting and theres plenty of tech savvy lads to sort it out.

Every quality unit needs its dependable foot soldiers. He aint arriving on an AFL list at 24 as Patrick Dangerfield. He's a 15-22 selected player who will do a job to the best of his ability. Hanging him for not being classy is picking low hanging fruit.

I prefer the glass half full thinking that we are building multi-dimensional talls. TGR has been talking about that on "Ology for years. Looks like Neeld is going "has size, can catch" lets see where you can play. The long term benefit is we can swing blokes back and forward to change it around. You make a good point about crumbers, but modern footy is about 28 blokes chasing the ball from one end to the other with 4 at either end. if it comes in quick not much chance of a forward flanker getting to the crumb. Our additional problem is we have flankers like Howe and Sylvia who can take a mark and they all end up flying for the same balls (like yesterday when Clark cleaned Howe up), with no one staying down. That's something Leigh Brown's got to sort out. As for Ricky, he's got 3 months to get busy or get packing.

Everything about his lack of acceleration, massive turning circle and poor kicking penetration is screaming OP to me. He's like Luke Ball circa 2007.

Pushing Maxwell into the bench wasn't supposed to be tough. Did Dustin Fletcher get admonished for putting, ironically, Tapscott in the fence on the outer wing last week?? No, didn't think so...

What Luke did wasn't pretty but he'll learn to channel those attacks for the right time. Glen Archer did some stupid things early in his career. The long term benefit of that stupidity was the opposition tread carefully around him. If Tapscott can get a reputation as a wrecking ball he'll be a footstep ahead of many an opponent, which is a win for him and the club.

there's something about this kid. reading his tweets he's clearly a thoughtful and deep thinker. He knows he's only going to get one chance and he won't die wondering. Have liked his poise the last 2 weeks after looking hopeless forward and in the ruck. Bigger, stronger and better skills than Matt Warnock, who we essentially gave up for Sellar.

George is trying to sort it out. We need blokes like you, Nasher and Williamson to get the keys to the joint and give it the once over.

Should have explained myself better as I don't want to come across antagonistic. I don't think Ology posters (even TGR really) hang any dung on 'Land anymore, and haven't for years. Certainly back in the day we (I say we as I was as guilty as the next) were arrogantly dismissive of this site. The perception, rightly or wrongly, was Ology was for the smart posters who'd been around the block a few times and 'Land was for Gen Y who hadn't been jaded by 50 years of no success. But that's old news. Ology started struggling when posters like Hannabal, Sleeve, Rollo, Knackers and Mick Rocks lost interest for whatever reason. Losing the functionality to take on new posters just fast tracked a seemingly inevitable death. I'd like to think an overhaul of the site would result in a return to past glories, but I'm not certain we could tolerate new posters after its been a private forum for so long. Of course, this site has gone from strength to strength as there hasn't been any option for new posters to try the alternative. I don't post here partly cause I can't be bothered, partly because no one here gives a [censored] about my posts and I don't get the ego boost like I get over the road. Mostly I don't post here because there is a few posters who feel the need to post in every thread offering nothing of substance. but I certainly respect the job the mods do in controlling a shed load of traffic with minimal angst, something Ology was never able to achieve. Nash: Maybe we should explore that Ology sub forum we discussed on Facebook a cuppla years back.

too true. I wasn't aware there was an us and them these days. Some of the blokes hanging poo in here probably don't realise 'Ology was once the main MFC forum and its only due to some (real life) sad circumstances that theres no one at the wheel. Being good at writing posts on a football forum has SFA to do with the site you're writing on, but some seem to think its a some sort of cyber space Bikie Wars where you're posting your colours to a mast. Stakka/Curry and Beer clearly the Jock Ross of the show.

definitely Cuthbertson in the bottom left Strawbs doesn't look like he's put on a kg since he retired. good for a bloke that can barely walk.