PaulRB

Watts Blease Sellar Jetta Tapscott Trengove Dunn Grimes Jamar Gawn Nicholson

The biased shrill and vengeful tone of her continued campaign has become tiresome and dogmatic. Don and the club's minimal (and legalistic) response was spot on, and probably enraged CW into her latest round of rabid ramblings. Readers of The Age will tire and be repulsed by her continued attempt to name and shame the club without evidence and without the club having an unbiased right of reply. She's been given a long leash on this campaign but I imagine her editors at The Age will tire of it also, and tighten the leash soon.

I agree. Surely a priority of our glorious media would be to present a factual analysis of the performance of all teams that have "won" a priority pick (and narrowly missed them) in the past decade? Perhaps a report by a well credentialed statistician to any trends in the available data for teams finishing within reach of the prized priority pick. Or would such an even handed perspective take the wind out of CW's sails on this issue? Is it dissapointing that the brilliant minds in the Australian Press have not managed to examine the data and present this data in an unbiased way...

Would or should part of the Clubs response include a factual analysis of the performance of all teams that have "won" a priority pick (and narrowly missed them) in the past decade? Would a report by a well credentialed statistician reveal any trend in the available data for teams finishing within reach of the prized priority pick. Not now, but maybe? should the AFL be swayed by the chanting of the crowd that CW is trying to stur up? Surprised our brilliant minds in the Australian Press have not managed to examine the data and present the data in an unbiased way...

In an area like this one, where the rules are ill-defined, it's the actions (and consequences) of others that serve to guide us...

Caro might not run out of steam, or witnesses or memos... but the public's interest, in the continual flogging of the perennial underdogs that finished 16th for a crime most would see other clubs of also having committed, will wane quickly.

Indeed, the best solution would be for the AFL to conclude the accusation of tanking is too difficult to sustain and prove given their vague rules in this area and the nature of the offense. It would then need to tighten the rules in this area or or remove temptation of gaining higher draft pick for losing games of footy.

I like the clubs approach to date and the statement today. We'd look like duffers responding to every vapour and rumour being peddled by the media, so we keep silent until we know: what rule or law we are accused of breaking, how the rule break alledgedly occured, what evidence is available to support this accusation, what the likely penalties or sanctions are, and What re-course, legal or otherwise, would best suit the club in order to fight the sanctions. Caro will run out of steam by cup day, and quicker if the club refuses to take her bait and act on or respond to her accusations.

Bang! - Giants turn to tippett Oh how I wish to be an expansion club!

Smiling at training!!! more fodder for Caro's next piece.

With a face like yours BH maybe it wasn't Trenners legs thinning down you noticed, but something else, hardening up?

What tanking?

They'd be freeing up salary space for Kurt then...

He was. Ain't no more.Attention starved big mouth now.

The AFL have already penalised us for the 2009 priority pick, they took it off us last year. Case closed.

Looking at the boys back at training reminded me why I follow footy and my belief that we are now prepped and poised for a significant upswing in our fortunes. Why? Well i'm glad you asked: - Draw is in and looks favourable with many winnable matches at home in the first half of the season. - the player cleanout is almost complete and there are young stars and hungry experienced players coming into the playing group - our large collection of talented kids have returned to the club, trim, focused and aware of the gap they need to close over the next year to compete in finals, and now know their success rests on their shoulders. Go Dees, bring on 2013 and lets shove it up the rest of the footy world.

I don't mind being booked as long as we both are. The more being booked the lower the fine.

In an ideal world Journos would only tell the truth from a perspective of univeral knowing and we could trust everything they write. I don't live in that world, in my world Journos are time poor, under resourced lackies competing for eyeballs with every semi-plausable piece of info or rumour that crosses their desk. Being aware of the world I live leads me to take their writings with a grain of salt. That said, If the MFC were a well run organisation with integrity then we could get on your high horse and take others to task for stretching the truth. Unfortunately we have a sordid history on the integrity front including breaches of the salary cap, losing games to improve draft picks... Funny how people defend their clubs lack of integrity by highlighting the lack of it in others.

Unless it leads to the club being publicly labels as "tankers" and cheats, and subject to an AFL integrity investigation, possible sanctions etc... To me thats where the actions we took were flawed, have damaged the club, and are yet to be explained to the rank and file as to how we might avoid a repeat in the future...

Thanks BB. I'd be keen to for such scheming, white anting, Judas's etc to be exposed if you and others in the know are able. It makes it hard for the club to honestly examine itself and improve if there are some intent of bringing the club into public disrepute so that they can then arrive on their white charges.

yes. I'm not justifying her bias. My point is for us to use this fiasco to focus on improving the club. The reason we're on the rack is not simply down to one woman at The Age having a grudge, and to paint it that way distracts from the lessons we need to learn from this episode.

A world where they have to milk a daily story from an industry that is dormant over the pre-season.

I guess I see two fronts in this issue: The first is the MFC's Public fight on "tanking" - is our fight to avoid sanctions from the investigation, our fight to not be punished alone for what many clubs have done. CW is wrong in honing in only on Melb, applying retrospective logic to events to craft a story (i.e. player revolt at half time...etc). But I'm less worried about this ending badly for us, especially now the Heraldsun has highlighted the actions of Carlton doing exactly the same thing in 2007 and people like Eddie coming out saying we'd have been idiots to do otherwise... It is the second issue that concerns me more. The internal cultural issues within the MFC and whether we are building a culture as a club that will take us to a flag. This year we've seen a purge of 15 players, over the past couple of years most of our playing leadership group from 2009 has gone. We've all seen the need and applauded Neeld for this change. In addition, since 2009 most of the football department has been turned over, coach replaced, Chris Connelly marginalised, etc... However, we don't seem to have publicly touched on or addressed the role the executive and board have had in the culture issues at Melbourne. As a relative outsider to the inner sanctum at Melb I don't know who or what or why we have ended up being on the rack for alleged tanking. I don't know who or what or why we've been a basket case as a football team for the last 5 years. But if we've turned over the players, the FD, the coach, then the surely an honest look at the exec and board is warranted? And if CW's persecution of the MFC is the catalyst we need to do this, then bring it on.

You may well be right about her agenda, issues with CS etc... and boo to her for that. However, there is an ongoing AFL investigation into tanking at Melbourne, which CW did not instigate (thank Brock for that). Given the AFL investigation has dragged on without updates from the AFL she (being in the media) is rightfully asking questions, probing , speculating. But she's only progressed this far through 1. the MFC running a loose ship in 2009, and 2. the MFC, as a result, being under investigation by the AFL. I don't think we should blame the mirror if we don't like what we see, irrespective of how distorted the mirror is in this case. We need to learn and improve from this episode, and turning our focus on CW (no matter the extent to which she may deserve it) only distracts from the core business of improving our club.

She's not the story, the MFC are.