deejammin'

Super game. Also Georgia Campbell and Gall, wow! Goldy just huge! Kate Hore is all class, probably should’ve played her permanent mid the second Liv went down in hindsight. Since Kate’s spent the majority of the game in there with Hanks and Heater we’ve been flying!

Ok, so let’s entertain this nonsense for a second. Let’s say the club finds a trade for Clayton they’re happy with and do it. That means within 10 days the President, Football Manager and the List Manager will all have lied to the public and Melbourne’s members about trading Clayton (not to mention Geelong’s list manager). Members are upset when good players are traded, particularly when they’re in contract, combine that with outright lies and the relief most members felt when hearing that announcement and the fury will be like nothing we’ve seen before. How do you spin that? How do you run a membership drive? How do you get members and supporters to ever trust you again? How do you get donations for a new home base? How do you keep your other players on the list? I think this is staying in the press through a combination of boredom and wanting to maintain pressure on a clearly very media disliked Gary Pert (check out Barrett’s article on AFL.com outright calling for Pert to go). But I also just can’t see how it happens due to the fall out for the football club, Brad Green starts his presidency with an outright lie at the B&F?!!! We’re being called a circus and disaster and everything else now, imagine if we immediately make three senior club figures liars. Insanity.

In the presser today, Lamb a dead set straight shooter, who wouldn’t even spin whether we were an attractive destination for players at the moment categorically denied that Pert “shopped around” Clayton Oliver. Pert may have spoken to clubs about a range of things, but Oliver was “was never up for trade” and not “shopped around”. So yes, I do not believe the reports Pert called one other club now, not even multiple clubs, Jay Clark was saying one club now, to offer Oliver in trade. Whatever happened, whatever the other club official who leaked this thought, or misrepresented, Lamb was clearly stating today we weren’t offering Oliver for trade.

Tim Lamb: “Shopped him around is not a correct statement.” We categorically did not “shop him around” prove otherwise or stop supporting a media campaign that is getting more ridiculous by the day.

Ahhhh, pretty sure we made the statement: Richardson: We’re not trading Clayton. He’s an important member of our team and we look forward to him playing for us in 2025. Brad Green: Oliver is in our starting midfield in 2025 Tim Lamb: We love Clayton Oliver and are super proud of him. He’s a valuable member of our team and was never up for trade. Goodwin and Richardson are in constant contact with him. Leigh Montagna: Melbourne need to decide whether they’re in or out on Oliver. Sam McClure: Melbourne are still trading Oliver. 7 media+ Tohmey: Melbourne and Geelong are fighting about Oliver. WTAF!! 🤯 The AFL media is an absolute joke!

I need to take a break from posting as I’ve been overdoing it lately but on Petty you’re not quite right there. Petty’s situation changed, that was the main motivation for signing at MFC, if he’d wanted to see another AFC deal he would’ve waited til much closer to the seasons end. It had nothing to do with ‘tanking his value’, while many at our club are frustrated with him as a forward his value as a defender, which AFC wanted, remains. On Trac, yes it’s possible the club could’ve done better. But it was also a once in a lifetime trauma that changed Trac’s entire outlook and made him reassess. It’s possible that if Kate Roffey sent him a dozen red roses every day in the second half of the year he still asks for a trade, trauma is complex. Oliver came up again largely because we put him up last year as a threat and clubs are still sniffing around and it went viral because the media are after us in the wake of Roffey’s sacking and just generally have been for the last 3 years. Geelong were aggressive and here we are. Clearly the club has problems, our President just left and we have two reviews going. But as someone who works for an organisation in a different industry that copped some negative media treatment in recent years I’ve seen first hand how an organisation painted as a “circus” in the media can just have one or two loose cannons or two feuding individuals and once resolved be revealed to have had a majority excellent culture and dedicated professional environment. It’s never as good as it’s reported, it’s never as bad. I think we need to be careful not to tear our club apart at the instigation of outside forces who either don’t care what happens to us, or have grudges and direct hatred they want sated.

No doubt about it. We need to have a big 2025. But there’s actually a good chance we do it with Gawn, Viney, Trac, Oliver, Pickett, May, Lever, Langdon, Fritsch, Rivers, McVee, Petty, JVR, Windsor, Turner and co. Also when we lost the 10 of our last 15 we had, no Brayshaw at all, No Trac for 10, No Lever for 6, No May for 3, No Gawn for 2, No Salem for 4, No Windsor for 4 (he’s amazingly important for a first year player). I’d back us in with a good pre-season and some luck with injuries, to say nothing of pick 5 and improvement from Jefferson, KBrown, AMW, Chandler, Howes and co. But yes, Goodwin will be under huge pressure and should we do badly, he’ll probably be gone, such is the life of a senior coach. Hell, Longmire and Hinkley could be gone if they fail next year, and they just played in a GF and Prelim respectively.

There’s a difference between being open to a trade and being able to engineer one. Players change their minds all the time. Petty wanted a trade last year, re-signed for four this year, Papley, Ben King etc. If you had an honest poll of player managers 5-10 players at every club would entertain a trade, especially if it was to a club contending. Things change, which is why if he gets back to his best and we storm back up the ladder we’ll be very grateful both Clarry and Trac were on long term deals. There’s also the question of whether the reason why Clarry was open to the trade was entirely true. Was he open to a trade because his management was sniffing it out for six months as per Cornes? Or was he hurt to find Pert had shopped him around? Per McClure and Morris Or was the club pushing him out? Per Gleeson and Tohmey. Or was he just doing a bit of the grass is greener? I love my colleagues and my job but every few months I look around, if I had a manager to do that for more I’d probably do it more, even though I doubt I’d ever leave! It’s human nature. It doesn’t mean we won’t keep him, that he won’t be happy at MFC as he has been for the rest of his career. And it surprises me anyone doubts how aggressive Geelong has been in getting him, while my quote post was tongue in cheek, no one at Geelong denies any of those actions.

It’s a joke, it’s not a real quote. I’ll change the quotation marks. But it is a real summary of Geelong’s actions in this saga.

Clayton might have wanted to go. Trac might have wanted to go. It doesn’t mean MFC wants to or will trade them out of a long term contract. Likes are cheap, I liked your post. Bonds with a football boss, list manager, coach and other players who love and support you are real. Every club had quality players assessing their options, some of them may be silly enough to put some of that online, but what determines how the football public perceives it is how the media report it and how the football clubs involved behave. We may have some issues, Pert may have gone rogue, but the vast majority of this narrative has come from GFC and for them to try to play the big, magnanimous, honourable club now is sickeningly transparent.

Andrew Mackie: ‘We contacted Pert and Clayton’s manager regularly about Clayton for over two years, escalating in the past two months. We had Clayton have a phone call with our senior administrators and go out to a farm to be pitched by our players and repeatedly told the media all about it. We floated our future first through the media to push the story Melbourne needed to get his contract off their books and were pushing him out. All despite Richardson and Lamb saying he was not up for trade. And now, after the board has confirmed it and MFC have given us a whack privately at trade week and Clayton has told us no we are respecting their position and putting it to bed’ *not a real quote. A sarcastic but real summary of everything Geelong did in this saga.

I’m now very certain Geelong and Clarry’s manager caused this. They spoke to Pert to determine a value, we didn’t provide one, he was never up for trade, Geelong pushed hard to pitch to him, Clarry met with them but never asked for a trade. Geelong created the story and are trying to look graceful in backing away. Whether Pert made a mistake and was drawn into a conversation about Clarry’s value stupidly given he wasn’t tradable is the only remaining question. This is far more a media than an MFC circus. Only possible one at fault is Pert. The only MFC public statements from Richo, Green and Lamb have been 100% consistent. The rest is unconfirmed media whispers.

If Collingwood were giving away players for cultural reasons they should’ve had a fire sale! There’s quite a few they could’ve traded for the same reasons!

Yeah, those straight sets exits in 2021 and 2018 were brutal! Goodwin is 5-5 in finals with a Premiership. Not great, definitely not bad. He has the same number of Premierships as Scott and Longmire in the last ten years but hasn’t lost the number of prelims, or the GF flogging’s those two have, is that preferable?

That’s not remotely true. Our club barely leaked anything 22-23 and yet we were smashed in the media, particularly Michael Warner in the Herald Sun, every week on the word of two disgruntled ex employees one of whom last worked for the club in Goodwin’s first year on the basis of scurrilous rumours that have never been proven and have been strenuously denied. The same story was then run by the media for a month this year despite it being more than 6 years old and despite the Dr who was providing the story immediately backing away from it as soon as the focus moved away from it being an MFC issue to a broader AFL policy issue. There has been a clear campaign from the AFL media against three individuals at our club and the club more generally since 2022 and it has escalated lately mainly as our on-field performance has dropped, a few players have been unhappy and they were able to get one of the three, in Kate Roffey. Compare our coverage to that of Collingwood, they also had a HUGE drop off in form, players who want to leave and a huge scandal involving their CEO going on who was stood down and who has had serious situations involving misogyny under his watch for three years now. Or Geelong’s story with Stengle this year to the treatment of Clarry the year before. Crickets. The media is after MFC disproportionately to everyone else. Fact.

West Coast had a shorts list of dozens that included Cox, Hansen, Gianciracusa and many more and the only one who was actually interested was well down the list in our midfield coach, who our list had the benefit of having as our midfield coach under Goody this year. That’s with the benefit of months to put feelers out, run a thorough coaching search and recruitment process, install the coach early enough to have them start establishing their assistant coaching team and get everyone in the list management, drafting and recruitment team on the same page with what needs to happen with the list in the free agency, trade and draft period and to be ready to run a full pre-season as head coach. If Goody leaves now we will have time for none of this, we also only have Troy Chaplin of our senior assistant coaches left, leaving us with three key coaching vacancies Head, Mid and Forward in a shallow pool of available quality head coaches and coaches more generally. It would also leave us no time due a well run appointment process and with the senior management either involved in or being reviewed It would render any FD review useless as everything would change before the review even gets going. Not to mention our players love him and if he leaves on the eve of trade week all these players allegedly wanting out will go from mere murmurs to outright mutiny. Sacking or having Goody stand down now would be a suicidal debacle!!!

Brilliant win. Hore is just incredible. Hanks class. Bannan back to her best. Chaplin and Colvin finding their form. Most importantly we stopped the dinky little 45 degree kicks off half back for a turnover, ran the ball by hand or went long down the line and won the contest. Fantastic!

I didn’t say no one in our club is talking to Morris, I said no one from the board or Administration side of the club is talking to Morris, and I say it as our clubs board and administrators actions have repeatedly directly contradicted Morris’s reporting. There has been a concerted 3 year + campaign run through the courts and media with the intention of discrediting and removing Kate Roffey, Gary Pert and Simon Goodwin from our football club. In an interview earlier this year a certain doctor walking back his comments on the AFL illicit drugs policy said “I am only doing this to highlight Melbourne’s negative culture” and “there are only three or four people at the MFC that are the problem”. With Kate Roffey going this has only escalated. The MFC would’ve hoped Roffey leaving and the review would get us some clean air but within twelve hours of that announcement Micheal Warner was laying the faults of our club at Pert’s feet and stating he shouldn’t be involved in the review. Then multiple media outlets published statements from ex players and presidents that Goodwin should be sacked. The campaign continues. The fact media outlets are posting random open letters from supporters purely because they support this campaign adds more credence to this. In this context the idea that the board, Pert or Goodwin and the members of our administration are leaking to Morris is laughable. There might be leaks to other more trusted media sources, that as you say, are clunky attempts to reset the narrative. But Morris isn’t getting them firsthand. And because of the context of this campaign any information that could only truly be known by Gary Pert and officials from other clubs with their own motives (like say, getting a 4x B&F, Coaches award winner, premiership player who at their best is in the best 5 or so mids in the comp for a relatively low draft pick) is fraught. I don’t know whether Pert is a problem, or if he should be removed from the review, or if he did do something stupid with this Oliver situation and should be removed as a result. But given the context of the overt ongoing campaign against him and others at our club run through the media for over three years now I think we should all take any reporting with a large grain of salt.

I think you and a few others are misunderstanding what I am saying. I’m NOT saying no players or people affiliated with players and club staff are leaking, some of them to Morris, clearly Trac’s camp has. That’s exactly what Gawny was lamenting today and it has to stop. Partly as it spreads rumours maliciously, ask any player “your club is shopping player x around, why?” And they may well be able to come up with behavioural reasons, or disgruntled other players or dynamics between staff and the player to explain why. Particularly when there’s a review underway, But it’s a classic disingenuous journalism and lawyer tactic as it’s all speculation and the players don’t know that original statement to be true, it may be false, and thus they may be providing reasons which don’t exist for a situation that isn’t happening. I’m also NOT saying Clarry didn’t meet with Geelong. That’s well documented. What I am saying is that the people/person at the heart of this issue at MFC are NOT leaking to Morris. This whole thing boils down to: 1. Did Gary Pert shop Oliver to other club officials. 2. Was he doing so with the blessing of the footy department, list management team and were they planning to push Oliver out. 3. Were the board aware. None of the people from MFC who know the answers to those three things are leaking to Morris. As I said in my original post neither the BOARD nor ADMINISTRATION are leaking to Morris, especially given his history with the club. He is extremely disliked by MFC for breaking stories while an employee. Extremely disliked by the Bulldogs for breaking stories without fact checking and sensitivity checking first, Richmond ditto. Even if Pert, Goodwin, Lamb, Richo or the board wanted to leak to the media. It wouldn’t be Morris. So where did Morris’s original story that Pet was shopping Oliver around come from? Clearly officials from the other club(s) involved. This will all play out now but one of three things has happened. 1. Pert did do it on his own and will likely be gone now as he has lost the faith of the board, administration and football department. 2. Pert did do it with the blessing of at least part of the list management comittee or FD and our club is a dumpster fire that has lost the plot. The review needs to be made independent of Pert and we need to get our house in order even more than we already did. 3. Club officials at Geelong misrepresented an honest conversation with Pert where he didn’t shop Oliver around for their own advantage. Or worse made the whole thing up. Oliver and his management heard from reporters this was the case and looked into Geelong as he was hurt by this reporting and flattered by their pitch. All three scenarios are possible and I don’t trust Tom Morris or Sam McLure to give us any unbiased or truthful opinions on this. I don’t believe the board only found all this out two days ago and that’s why it’s stopped either, as reported by Morris tonight. They would’ve been across the media the whole time. And there’s no way the board was leaking that to Morris. They are the only ones who would know. That’s what I was saying, agree or disagree, but nothing is “clearly the case” here.

I’d say it clearly is. He’s been well updated on the Geelong side but has so much wrong on our side.

Tom Morris is the LAST journalist anyone on our board or administration would ever talk to after his disastrous time at the club. Anything he says is either second hand or straight up made up. No credibility at all.

All this argument about what punishment Clayton should’ve would’ve could’ve had. The time is gone, cutting off our nose to spite our face now will not help. I’m glad he’s staying, he makes us a better team, his form dropped against Port when he hurt his hand and never recovered. We’re a better team with him, Geelong are worse without him and we’ve missed out on a 2026 pick which wouldn’t have helped us next year anyway. I don’t care what the media say, their bias against us is clear. Maybe our club is a dumpster fire, maybe it’s not. There’s actually been very little concrete proof. I’m backing Clayton in for a huge 2025 and with a bit of luck with injuries and our young blokes improving, + pick 5 a new forward and mid coach and some cobwebs cleared out in the program we’ll be a formidable team.

These reporters better hope that they have dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s if Pert can prove he never did this, defamation lawsuits incoming, especially if Pert’s job is effected, or he’s moved on. If he did do it then I’d say Perts in huge trouble. But let’s just hypothesise: Geelong have wanted Oliver for two seasons. They saw MFC was weak with the departure of a president, the Petracca saga, a review and CEO Pert unpopular. So they have a conversation with Pert about Oliver then they start a story that Pert is shopping Oliver around through media allies. They then meet with Clayton and his management and try to get Clayton to say he wants to go to them to force MFC to take a low ball trade for him all the while having the footy media push SUPER hard for MFC to do it. Not entirely implausible. Geelong senior management are hardly squeaky clean, ask Bomber Thompson.

I just don’t see a trade to Geelong happening. A. Geelong don’t have the currency, their first round pick is too low and with Smith and Clarry a future first is likely to be the same or worse. B. What currency they do have is going into Smith first. C. We are low on quality mids and Clayton’s value is at an all time low. D. He has a huge, multi million dollar contract and if we want him to stay he stays. E. If there’s any credence to the idea we’re pushing him out it’s idiotic. It would be a colossally stupid decision and the fact the club made a statement within a day of it coming out saying he’s staying tells me they know this. I’m taking a break from footy media until the end of trade week. They’ll probably throw up five more of my favourite MFC players who are disgruntled and leaving in the next two weeks as they clearly hate Pert, Goody and the club and are sticking the boots in. They’ve been waiting three years for our on field performance to drop so they could. The media is so Geelong friendly there is no doubt some of this is Geelong sensing weakness and trying to make it happen through their media mates. The sad thing is this has been the most successful period of my lifetime and yet the footy media coverage has been so negative since 2022 it’s been so difficult to fully enjoy it. What the AFL media is doing to us MFC fans through this period can never be forgiven. All clubs have issues, maybe we’re a basket case, only time will tell but these media [censored] have done everything in their power to make the last three years totally unenjoyable for us and it’s a disgrace. The treatment of Essendon through the drug scandal was more friendly in the media than this!! I have no doubt the back end of this year crowd numbers and this years memberships were badly tarnished by the constant negative critique of our club. Shameful, clearly some people just hate having a successful MFC or MFC supporters enjoying football.

This is embarrassing. So many basic errors. I know we have injuries but what is happening?!