La Dee-vina Comedia

I imagine Paul Connors was interviewed and hence the reason for his name appearing so often. However, Connors has for years chosen the deliberate strategy of using the media in an effort to force better deals out of clubs (either better money for players who remain or better terms of trade, so to speak, to enable transfers). The comments he is reported to have made about Jack Watts strike me as suggesting that Watts will be remaining at Melbourne, at least for 2016. If Watts was moving, I would expect a more bullish statement from Connors trying to engineer a deal.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2015-10-05/essendon-among-four-clubs-fined-for-asada-breach This is probably a simple error, but if there's one club that you'd think might try a bit harder not to stuff it up... Thankfully, we're not one of the ones being fined (St Kilda, Richmond, Port Adelaide and Essendon are the four).

I heard him speak at a function a few years ago. I'm pretty sure he said 75 kg was his playing weight at the end of his career but when he started he was only 69 kg.

Not winning a Brownlow is understandable because, like Nathan Jones, he played a lot of his football in a losing team which makes it hard to get votes. However, what I have never understood is why he only won our B & F once. I think I'm on safe ground, even on Demonland, if I say he has been Melbourne's best player since Barassi. If anyone wishes to dispute that statement, feel free to do so, but please justify why you wish to nominate anyone else.

Is Demonland any better?

My suspicion is he will have more VB in him than VDB. Note to self: stop responding to this rubbish.

Given Essendon's propensity to fail to keep records and other such stuff there must be a real chance there'll be confusion in their paperwork we'll end up with Carlisle instead of Melksham.

I look forward to reading next season's training reports about our new training technique of crawling over broken glass. What could possibly go wrong?

The irony goes further than that. He presided over a Premiership team which was subsequently accused of having a culture involving activities which involve the ingestion of various unusual substances, (although not club endorsed).

I don't disagree regarding Martin. But the comment I was responding to was about "most of our players" not "all of our players", so I can be magnanimous in allowing you that one.

Not sure about "fire sale". Perhaps getting "nothing for most of our players" was what those players were worth at the time...and why Neeld moved them on. It constantly amazes me that people want to blame Neeld for everything.

Love the double meaning. Both sides of the argument on Demonland can take both umbrage and solace at the same time.

Or he might not have agreed to terms but still wants to stay. Or he could be travelling and unwilling to sign until he returns from his holiday. Or his manager is waiting for another club who he thinks might be interested completes their playing commitments for the year. Or...

I'm not sure we were ever "ruthless". Certainly in the second half of the 60s and throughout the 70s we were victims of being part of the Melbourne Cricket Club that believed that cricket was more important and didn't allow spending on football to allow the MFC to match it with other clubs as they slowly became professional. Apart from his glorious playing career Barassi's greatest contribution to the club when he returned as coach was separating the MFC from the MCC to enable better decisions to be made. Ironically, Jim Stynes' greatest non-playing contribution may have been realigning the MFC back with the MCC. Both decisions were, I think, the right decisions for their times. I think our success in the 50s and 60s was more a result of the MCC, and therefore the MFC, being the powerhouse amateur club of its time.

Didn't hear it, but are you sure he wasn't using the past tense? Something like, "Then Healy piped in with the fleeting comment that, depending on contract discussions at Melbourne, he could have end up a Demon."

Some of those descriptions are helpful. "Tough-nut" means unskilled; "utility" means he didn't have a position to call his own; "tall" means he wasn't actually good enough to be called a ruckman or a key position player.

Just to clarify, are you assuming vandenBerg will be upgraded leaving 5 spots or has the decision to upgrade him already been announced?

It's its that's it for me.

I couldn't possibly confirm or deny. But was Olisik posting in this thread? I didn't notice.

You should use the Ignore feature in your Preferences. I have only one poster - who happens to have posted multiple times in this thread - on Ignore. The feature works a treat as I only feel about 5% dumber.

All this discussion about trading picks in this year's weak draft seems to be missing the point that future year draft picks are now also able to be traded. I'm not advocating that Jack Watts should be traded, but surely we need to update our thinking a bit.

Really? I would have thought any Senior Coach worth his salt would want to make himself the "good cop" and ensure one or more of is assistants undertook the "bad cop" role. That arrangement seems to work well for the mafia...and (successful) politicians.

To clarify, I think the point you're making was that the Bracks Government overturned a Kennett decision and stopped shops from opening on Easter Sunday if they employed more than a certain number of people. That allowed small businesses (milk bars, for example) to open but prevented larger businesses (such as Coles) from doing so. And there's another group of employees who work on Easter Sunday we've forgotten about: AFL footballers, ground staff, media who cover football, etc.

That's not entirely true. Nurses, police, train drivers, cinema staff, pub employees, fast food workers, etc all worked.

...for 2015.