deejammin'

Its always difficult and frustrating to know what to make of the pre-season comp, however it may not be as meaningless as some on here assert. Since the infamous Carlton performance in the NAB cup in 2007, (going on to gain the spoon was most likely more the result of their late season tanking rather than them truly being the worst in the comp however) at least one or more of the finalists in the NAB cup have gone deep into the regular season finals to prelims and grand finals. Many including myself would believe that this will happen again this year with Collingwood. So although some match results can seem meaningless, certainly Essendon in a final seems laughable, I'm not so sure its as irrelevant as people think, as the great clubs tend to have great depth and desire to win the NAB cup, and seem to be putting some focus on winning pre-season games.. or at least put a few decent performances together. That being said .. I am not panicking at this stage, I think Melbourne seems to have shown a bit this preseason and should continue to improve on last year. However, it is a little worrying that we still exihibit some of our key negatives from last year, not winning enough clearances, not entering the forward 50 enough, giving up too many goals attempting to get the ball out of defence... I'm not in the business of chastisizing young players for their pre-season performance, however based on the aforementioned I would think a lot would have to improve for us to be challenging top sides this year. So bring on the season, bring on improvement and lets see what happens...

This game is still up for grabs, we have played one bad stretch, grab a couple in a row and we're a chance. Would be more encouraging to have the dees winning some clearances tho...

Great topic, lots of fun... Premiers for '11: Hawthorn Wooden Spoon: Essendon (God I hope so) Most Goals for Demons: Jurrah - 60 Leading Goalkicker in AFL: Buddy Franklin 72 Brownlow: Luke Hodge Final Ladder position: 8th Wins: 13 Most tackles: Jordie McKenzie Most marks: Jamar Most handballs: Brent Moloney Most kicks: Aaron Davey (here's hoping) Most 1%'s: Rivers Best first year player: Tapscott Bluey: Jamar Biggest crowd: 92,000 - Elimination Final Vs Carlton Worst Journo: Mike Sheahan Best Journo: Flanagan Biggest news story: Eddie MacGuire traded to GWS (Malthouse : "&*%$ing Statutory Rapist!" (to Nixon)) Quote of the season: "Who would leave Melbourne now?" Tom Scully

For those who are playing down the significance of this loss I totally agree that in general NAB cup means nothing and we did play some players out of position. However I think our club and the players actually really wanted to win that one and thought they would going in... very dissapointing to be outplayed in that situation, if we had no intent to win it would still not be a great performance. Overall I hope future games make me forget about this one very quickly

1. Becoming the team of the Decade won't be all smooth sailing 2. Young players still make mistakes even when you expect them to instantaneously be perfect 3. Jurrah is &^%$ing Wicked!!!!!!!

Probably have a few people reconsidering whether some of those kids are worth Sheedy stealing? Hardingham tore us up for a while last night.

Dissappointing.... thats all it is really. I don't think the sky is falling and I hope it functions as a little wake up call to the things we can do better. However as a fan who really would have liked to see us advance further in the NAB cup (if only to drum up a little bit of positive press in the midst of the Scully thing) it was a very dissappointing effort, particularly as it is against a team that no one rates who played their kids. oh well... bring on the real thing

Reading through an inordinate amount of Age and HUN articles in order to get my footy fix I came accross these lines in the "Greater Western Sydney Steals: Sheedy's Giant Hit List" article: "James Hird claims Sheedy has given his word not to take any Bombers" If this is true this seems extremely unfair, regardless of what happens at the Demons or any club, for Essendon not to face a poaching risk due to Sheedy's loyalty seems to fly in the face of the whole reason GWS is given these advantages. Surely if any Essendon players would be good for GWS and hence 'good for football' in the same sense any other team losing players is, Sheedy making these promises is extremely inappropriate. Makes me wish Neale Daniher or any other former Melbourne Coach was taking the reins at GWS so we could get these advantages..... Although that would be equally unfair. Maybe Essendon is lucky their playing list isn't worth it and it is easy for Sheedy to maintain this 'loyalty'.