nutbean

So if that is your stated aim of pushing regime change you are better of going to the game and taking 90,000 of your mates and all hold up signs saying "sack whoever it is you want sacked" and booing whoever you want to boo loudly. That way you would accomplish much more on your way to regime change without hurting the club coffers in the process...

You are delusional - dont worry - I am in the same lala land as you are. Doesnt matter where we are at if Watts, Dawes and Howe turn it on up forward today and both Jones gets 40 plus possessions we will knock off the Hawks. What is wrong with us ?

Thats the point I am trying to make but go one step further. Life is all about choices and you go the football, you dont go - its all good ( last time I looked Australia was a democracy). People attend or dont attend for all sorts of reasons and that is their choice. It just needs to be understood that there are consequences to all choices. And the consequence of non attendance is that it ultimately hurts the club. I dont go to all games and do I think that certain posters who go to every single game rain, hail or Neeld are doing better for than club than me and are better supporters than me...absolutely.

read carefully what I have said. I also do not go every opportunity even though I have a membership - but when there is tiny crowds to watch the Demons and we are being labelled as irrelevant then I am part of the blame as I am also not attending - so yes - it is an offence to the club that I dont turn up. What we do with our time is our choice and thats all good but by choosing not to go we are hurting the club - you dont get the luxury of saying "no offence to the club". (Also I am sorry to hear of your ill mother but I was responding to your first post where you said you have gone from going every week to not going at all and drew the obvious conclusion from you post that your absense was due to the teams performances - you failed to mention initially family problems which of course take precendent over everything else)

What you want to do is your choice but start off by saying no offence to the club ? Had you left that off then all is good. Its like saying "I don't want to hurt you but I am going to punch you in the face". Supporters not turning up and not renewing memberships whilst we are playing poorly, or whilst Neeld is coach or whilst Spencer is first ruck may be understandable and people may make other choices - thats all good - but dont say "no offence to the club" because these actions are exactly that. These actions hurt the club.

That is the one big cross against Neeld. I applaud his effort to attempt to change the culture - unfortunately too few have jumped aboard and embraced. No one thought it would be an overnight process but I dont think anyone thought we would plummet to these depths and Neeld must take responsibility along with the players.

Whilst it is free choice how often you attend or whether you buy a membership and how you support the club you cant have it both ways. The "I dont want to harm the club" but I wont buy a membership or attend is an oxymoron. It is not anyone place to judge and it makes zero difference to me what you do but by the same token i cant let the remark with "no offence to the club" just go because if you used to go and now you dont that is exactly what it is - an offence to the club. edit - I am not having a go at your choices - but your deflection of the consequences of your actions.

Gotta love a statement that has absolutely no way of being proven right or wrong so I think I'll pass on your assurances. Note that we have some on here who bemoan us not taking Sheedy when we had the chance but his subsequent coaching efforts and recruiting strategies to date have been questionable at best.

therein lies the problem - but it is not one problem - it is a myriad of problems - our players are not good enough, strong enough of body or character and they are not responding to the coach. On the flip side you can plainly make the argument that the coach is unable to get the players to respond to him. Either way it is rare that three quarters of the team are sacked for not responding to the coach but common place for a coach to be sacked for three quarters of the team not responding to him. I fully admire Neeld for his stance of trying to rid of us a soft [censored] culture ( although he has back tracked on his early talk of not accepting mediocrity and fallen into the "baileyesque" excuses of inexperience and light bodies.) I fully condemn the players for not coming on board and I fully condemn Neeld for not being able to get the players on board. I never expected lots of wins from last season to this - I expected some measure of improvement to show that last year was the bottom and some progress has been made. Alas......

I am a great Chris Dawes admirer - I was at a Collingwood and am now. Is he a Cloke ? No way - doesnt have the hands but what he has in everything he does is a thirst for the contest. I like his ability not only to win some contests but it is the amount of contests he halves. Brings the ball to the ground, crashes packs. He got in front of his opponent up on the wing and was spoiled ( probably should have taken the mark) but then buttered up to make sure the ball didnt leave his area by laying a tackle on the Richmond bloke who picked up the crumbs. It is his 2nd and 3rd e Also - no comparison to Miller - yeah he leads up but he is a much smarter footballer than Miller ever was.

well said...

My days of crystal balling are well and truly over..... Anyone who wants to say we will have a good midfield in 3-4 years time - I say phoeeyyy.... 3-4 years ago we were being touted as being a powerhouse of the future with the brightest crop of young kids - how has that turned out. I live in the now - Grimes has shown a lot but keeps getting injured. Jones - I think is a limited footballer but I love him because he give 100% each week. He is our number one midfielder and can hold his head high - but is he a Pendlebury ? a Cotchin ? an Ablett ? no siree. Trengove had a good first year but hasnt really fired since - jury is out. Toumpas and Viney could be anything - and they could be nothing. Our midfield at present is no good and we are simply guessing by saying 3-4 years it will be very capable.

At the end of the day , for any established coach , no may actually mean no. I dont know the exact details of the approach that was made to Ross Lyon - from what we have heard from the media ( uggh) we rang his manager and he said he is staying at StKilda and that was end of it. Freo proved that wasnt the end of it. If Roos in our sights - then there many not be any offer that he will accept but going forward I would like to think that if we want someone we just dont make a call to his manager - I believe we should be a serial stalker and live by the motto - "no doesnt mean no". Keep on hammering from all different angles until no becomes yes or we have to move on because of time constraints ( or we shift our attention to any equally good choice) and no has to be no. Whilst what Freo did with Lyon and Harvey was ugly - it was effective and it got their man - I say more power to them

Whether you like the man or not - you cant really dispute his intelligence. He hasnt coached for a couple of years. I would suggest he is intelligent enough to alter his style and gameplan to what suits a list needs. Your suggesting he will come in do the same same as he did in Sydney - Whilst he would focus on defensive structures as all coaches do I think he would have evolved. Bottom line is neither of us know..

For those commenting on Roo's and boring football. I dream of going to the football and seeing our club playing and being "bored". Sure beats the hell out of the current alternative.

At the risk of repeating myself - you wouldnt know if Royal or any of the assistant coaches are doing are good or bad job - they only pass on the Neeld messages and plans- you can rightly or wrong judge Neeld but Neeld and Craig are probably the only two who would know if the assistants are doing a good or bad job.

"We have and will continue to defend the integrity of the Melbourne Football Club in the strongest possible fashion,'' the Demons president said. "We will continue to defend the rights of all our past and present club employees where we believe it is necessary to do so. McLardy said they would fiercely defend the club and the individuals involved against the allegations and also do what they could to protect the current side from any fall-out. Demons president Don McLardy declared earlier this month his club would fight to clear its name. ''I can assure you we will use every resource available to defend the integrity of Melbourne Football Club in the strongest possible way,'' he said. You are right - I have no idea about "every discussion between the Club and the AFL and read every email". But you cant have it both ways - most of the comments above by Don were made AFTER the MFC had seen what evidence the AFL had so Don is guilty of either showing no backbone and or completely misreading what the AFL would do and setting expectations too high by declaring he would fight for our integrity. Which one is it ? Edit - the only part of the debate I have some sympathy for is the AFL certainly decide how much $$ assistance to give us so standing up to them certainly could have repercussions but just dont try and sell me that our integrity of club was defended. Double Edit - his mistake in my eyes was not in accepting the penalty but previously making noises about vigorously defending our integrity - surely he had considered that we may get a penalty - then what ?We defend our integrity in the strongest possible way ..unless of course up to the point where the AFL actually do something to us and then we just roll over - but we rolled over in the strongest possible way" You are defending the indefensible. I repeat is Don guilty of being weak or miscalculating - its one or the other.

You do realise we were not found guilty of tanking..we were found guilty of ummm..what was it again - I am not sure anyone knows ? Do you think the AFL wants to go to court and look like bunnies by losing ? We can only go on what we read and heard ( not 100% reliable I know) but the concensus was that had this headed to court we would have been found guilty of nothing as the laws were so ill defined and non specific. So again if it was a Collingwood in the same situation it still would have not gone to court as the AFL knows it would have lost so it would have gone nowhere. The reason we caved is because the AFL knew we would cave. Same old same old. It was a fait accompli of our own making. What we were fined for god knows what because we agreed to be fined. The is merit in the argument that you dont bite the hand that feeds you...but this nonsense about spending millions in court is a nonsense. Had we showed some balls it still would not have gone to court. Don said we were prepared to go to court if necessary - solid as a blancmange.

oohh yes ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I really dont understand your stance. As members are we not allowed to constructively criticise without the retort being " if you can do better, you get put your hand up to get on the board" - thats just a nonsense. For the record 1/ I have the utmost respect for any and all on the board - giving up their time for no remuneration is a labour of love 2/ Under the current board there have been some good visible gains in debt demolition, the move to AAMI park and the consolidation of the partnership with Casey 3/ Under the current boards watch there has been massive failure on the core business of football 4/ Our president promised at the tanking investigation to vigorously defend the club and its personnels integrity and we allowed one of own to be jettisoned as well as being fined $500K for apparently not tanking - a fail for President and this board. So 1/ I will be "sitting on my hands" as far as running for a board position goes. 2/ If there is a viable alternative to the current board at the AGM as long as I believe they will show strength and committment to restoring pride and strength into the club I would happily vote for that ticket.

ummm..that why he has little thing called a contract ?

Transition plan ? Have a look at the transition plans that have been in place to date at other clubs - Roos/Longmire, Malthouse/Buckley - two successful clubs where the assistants were taking over after longish reigns with the clubs in good health. Sheedy/Cameron - Sheedy was always hired as a spuiker for the GWS and Cameron is coaching in all but name. On the other hand, it is hard to have a transition plan when you have no idea how the team will fare at round one with your coach having two years of a contract to go. So the transition plan in these circumstances will be the board sitting around the table - finding out confidentiailly and not too confidentially who is available and when they are available and then when the bullet does come telling one of the assistant that he is it for the time being. I havent heard of a transition plan for any club that has gone to dogs other than firing the coach and getting a new one.

whilst I am a swinging voter - the gloss has come of Neeld a little for me because last year he ran the line that we are younger, not physically developed and not as experienced but that is not a reason not to have a red hot crack and produce unacceptable results. This season he seems to be using the first part being younger, underdeveloped and inexperienced as an excuse for the second part - like a disclaimer. He wasnt making excuses last year - this year he seems to be. I heard excuses under Bailey and didnt like it and I dont like Neeld doing it this year. I dont want to hear it .

Apologising in advance for picking on one post only but here is a perfect example of what irks me here. Six weeks ago - written off, shown nothing Today - could be a real weapon going forward This says more about our instant glorification fixation than it does about Tapscott.

I think this is out of line - ( you are entitled to your opinion) - There are a number of very reactionary posters on this site that are "woe is us" and after little consideration want all and sundry sacked for not meeting unrealistic expectations. However I dont think there is one supporter on this site who honestly wants Neeld fired more that they want the team to succeed.