Pates

I think I'm there, I've stopped caring. I won't be able to make it to many more games and I am glad. Neeld will not be coaching next year, just a matter of time. Gut feeling is that it won't be this week, maybe after QB with the club having a week off to regroup. I wanted to believe, and for a long time I did. Every week I go hoping to see someone take the next step, or see the team structure hold up and us look competent but it seldom comes. Howe and Jones are the only ones I can think of who have improved under him.

Gotta say I could be with you. I can understand Ablett killing us but there still just fundamentals that we are simply not doing. Big quarter coming up for Neeld.

I just arrived at the ground, I hope the AFL is watching and are feeling appropriately embarrassed by the crowd. They should never shedule an expansion club vs Melbourne on a Sunday twilight Mother's Day again. I'll be surprised if the combined two crowds for today gets passed 20,000.

Hardly surprising. The $500K fine from the AFL was always going to hurt us, add on to that the severance of Schwab, the lawyer bills, and the poor performance of the team. Good luck to Peter Jackson on digging us out of this hole.

Man I'd classify myself as a Neeld supporter (or apologist as some of you too often pull out) but even I was in shock and annoyance when I saw the title of this thread. I understand what your saying about the benefit of stopping the media blood sport on sacking Neeld, but it would be showing blind faith and we have to show more intelligence than that. And at the end of the day who cares what the media says, if the club is backing Neeld then they can do it on their own terms.

Because our fitness was so far behind maybe they've gone to the opposite extreme to get up to standard, and next year they will settle into a more skills combined fitness program. Certainly skill are what kills us at the moment.

It's to do with the rental agreement on the stadium, plus with a larger ground there will always be more people to employ. Even if we close off the top section they still have to pay people to block the entrances up there. A small boutique stadium is easier and cheaper to manage, therefor easier to make a profit.

Of this extended bench: Jordie McKenzie, David Rodan, James Strauss, James Sellar, Dean Kent, Aaron Davey, Troy Davis My final would be: Davey, Kent (and play him from the start), Davis, Strauss (sub) I can understand why they didn't upgrade Toumpas, although it would've been good to have him up against players his own age I think he needs to have multiple good games at Casey before elevation. There's plenty of time with him, no need to rush. The big question is who we play on Ablett, surely on the back of his job on Judd last week Dunn gets the nod. Otherwise the other thought is let Ablett do his damage and tag one of the second tier players out. Good luck to Jones in his first game as captain (I think).

Actually I can very vividly remember the calls to make Trenners captain, as that year showed particular guts and determination in tackling and 1%ers. Greens leadership was waning and there were a lot of people calling for the club to be bold. Well they were and I don't disagree with it. It was about time the club went for something other than the safe option. The idea with these two is the fruits will be born in 3 years time when the core has developed with them up the front for the entire time.

I started at thread saying that I was for this so I'm very glad to hear they have gone with this. I feel it's the right call for the Trengove and more importantly for the club. Well deserve for Jones as well. There was no hoopla at all that came with this, it was a small press release. I have seen pointless promotion from the club before and this is certainly not one of those times. From what I gather of the article when Grimes is back, Jones will go back to being a VC. Perhaps if he excels at the role the club will go with it, but I would expect they'll go back to two. Maybe they have done this on the back of media opinion, but on FC Gary Lyon was under the impression that this was a protocol in place should this happen on a long term injury. Only the club really knows for sure, but I think for the club image and for the pressure release on Jack it is a positive move.

Well they're avoiding Good Friday, you can call that shafting I suppose but that's a moral reason. This one they clearly don't think there's any chance of money being in it, but they aren't even trying.

17500, I'm being a bit optimistic as well. I say this extremely rarely, but I agree with Caro, the AFL continually shaft Mothers Day where they could put a blockbuster on there and make a thing out of woman in the sport with free hand outs etc but instead decide to put one of the lowest drawing games of the year at the G. Makes and mockery of the day IMO.

I don't think anyone would consider making it a proper AFL ground until A LOT of work was put into it. The stadium would be a completely from scratch deal, similar to a Skoda/Metricon stadium type thing and I think a condition would be to get the train line extended to the ground, perhaps even just for games (if they do just the one track in and out). There would also need to be plenty of work put into traffic management to prevent the one current road being the only entrance by car. This is certainly not a case of us simply saying to the AFL we want games at Casey, it would be something that would need a lot of ground work and funding from the AFL, the local and state government, and (if we were to have a stake in it) the MFC. I did say earlier that we should push for one game down there in the next few years, but perhaps until they have a more practical way of getting people in there it needs to go on the back burner.

With the loss of Grimes I feel that we have to get someone in who is ready made for AFL. Magner is that. He has worked his butt off at VFL level and now there is not one but two LTI, Clark has been given a best case scenario of 6 weeks but Grimes has been given 8-10 weeks. He deserves it and we need a player other than Jones that can get the ball out of the guts.

I think one of the big challenges with Waverly was that it didn't have any easy public transport to get you there, you had to drive and when you did it was a nightmare getting in and out. Waverly was also much bigger with a capacity bigger than the G, but with shocking facilities. Not to mention the enormous size of the ground. Ultimately Waverly was doomed to fail with terrible design, shocking parking, and lack of transportation. I agree with would mainly cater to the east but I reckon there would be enough footy starved people out that side of the state that would see it as a much easier way to go to the footy. And when you have a stadium that's only 20-25000 capacity the break even point is much lower.

I went to the NAB cup game at Casey and for the first time I really thought there could be something in a boutique stadium down there. I reckon nothing higher than 25000, with the ability to be upgraded in the future (unlike AAMI Park) and I reckon people would come. The train line goes right past the ground, but there would be significant traffic management with vehicles that would need to be improved. I actually think Melbourne should aim to play an AFL game down there in a few years time (perhaps substituting an interstate game v GWS or something), and given they've done games at other country stadiums it's not unfeasible. But I have definitely become a supporter of this idea, and we should certainly be the ones up the front pushing it.

I guess my thought would be that watching him right now his confidence in himself and his body is already at an all time low. Having Jones there as back up in an official capacity could taken of the burden of him. We can't take the captaincy away from him (Barett suggests) that would be a slap in the face but giving him back up would I think help him.

Honestly for his price tag I don't think it'd be worth it. He has had well documented issues with his knees and injuries stemming from that, I would be concerned we'd be picking up a lame horse.

I think intelligence shouldn't come into it, he is a leader, he leads by example and if Trengove stays as co-captain he can handle that side of it while Jones shoulders the playing side of things and let Jack focus on his game. Watching FC tonight was interesting where Gary didn't just seem convinced they were going to elevate him in the absence of Grimes, he believed it was the protocol that was always in place. It was also interesting that he couldn't understand why all the others were so surprised, I must admit what Lloyd was saying made sense in that most clubs if you have a co-captain system and one goes down then the other becomes sole captain. I just wonder whether Gary knows something that we don't, that this was a planned scenario, particularly if it was Grimes that went down with a LTI.

That's exactly what he's saying, keep Trengove as co-captain and elevate Jones to a co-captain.

I think he talks out of his ass most of the time but I gotta say I agree with this. It solves many problems. Firstly I think the responsibilities are too much for Trenners to take on his own at the moment. He really needs to focus on his game more than anything else, with Jones as his co-captain he can do that. Secondly I think most people can agree that Jones is the only one apart from Clark who consistently leads from the front. Although I this Grimes can become a good captain for us, we can't have someone with the form of Trenners as a sole captain. Thirdly I think it rewards Nathan for his hard work over the last 3 years, he is the heart and sole of our club and I reckon it would officially recognise that. With Grimes injury I think we can also do it while saving a bit of face, with everyone in the media constantly saying Jones should be captain we can just say that we feel Trengove needs support at this time.

I was listening to SEN this arvo and they had some blues players on and the Ox asked about kicking drills and whether they are allowed to do their own training before or after training and he said the physio's don't allow it. The Ox spoke about how he used to do it every single training; repetition, repetition, repetition. He said it really helped with his confidence in kicking and marking. This is exactly the sort of thing our boys should be getting into.

Agreed, he's earned it and its a direct replacement. I also agree that leaving Jimmy at Casey until he puts consistent performances in is a good idea. That said its a good chance for him to go up against a team that's of his age group.

It's a catch 22 though, you choose people with good disposal but most of the time have difficulty getting their own ball and are reliant on it being dished out (Toumpas, Blease, Morton). They are invariably labelled as soft and when we're struggling like this people prefer to see "goers" in there that want the contest but get forgiven for average disposal (Magner, Couch, M Jones, McKenzie, Bail). You rarely get a the full packet, although with the draft pick we've had you'd hope we would've got one by now! What kills me is that these are AFL footballers here. How is it that they have made to it the top flight without being about to hit a 20m target? And the answer is the haven't. They must have the ability in them, or at the very least an ability to improve. There have been players that have fixed their techniques to kick better, but is there someone at the club that is trying to do this or are they too focused on "the plan". I'll also say that Chip, Grimes, and Trenners all used to have good disposal, I remember both Grimes and Chip being able to nail every one of their kicks in 2010 so that ability must still there. There were a lot of coach killer moments today.

When they were kicking from a kick in or had the ball deep in the defensive 50 I actually started counting the kicks and marks. I got to 5 in a row once and that lead to a kick on goal (can't remember who kicked it) but most of the time it was very lucky to get past 2. And as you said these aren't kicks with a high degree of difficulty, it's the sort of stuff you expect TAC players to nail just about every time.