La Dee-vina Comedia

I was excited until I read the last two words. Which only goes to show I have more faith in an anonymous poster on Demonland than on a Herald Sun reporter.

This trail of posts shows how easily a rumour becomes an unsubstantiated comment and eventually "a fact" which leads to emotional responses on Demonland!

Are MFC Board minutes made public? If so, where can they be found? If not, how would we know who voted for what? And just to add one extra point, even if the "old" Board members were involved and supported some very poor decisions, a complete clean out means a loss of corporate memory at the Board level. There will be a lot of mundane but nevertheless important non-football decisions made by the Board and having someone around who knows the history behind why a particular decision was made would continue to be valuable.

...at this time of year

but look great on paper

I think the Nathan Jones analogy does correctly illustrate my point but perhaps we disagree about the issue. While decisions of the Board have to be seen in public as unanimous so that it appears the Board is of one mind, that will not reflect reality. On many issues the Board is likely to have a diversity of opinions. In fact, Board's operate best when the orthodoxy is challenged in house. But once a decision is made any well-functioning body has to provide a unified front. As I said originally, I have no idea whether the current Board members who were there previously have - as individuals - been good or poor performers. I'm just saying it is naive to assume they supported every decision the previous Board made. And even if they did, that still doesn't mean they haven't got something valuable to offer today. Edit: typos

We don't really know what those who remain on the Board from the older ticket have contributed. The logic of saying all must go because the Board performed poorly is as logical as saying Nathan Jones should be delisted because the footy team has performed dreadfully since he joined the club.

They may be training in the gym and pool on the other days. They might also be in those "meetings" all players complain about. And I wouldn't discount the possibility of training at a "secret location" every once in a while to allow game plan adjustments without public scrutiny.

It used to be that when people wrote about "Col" I didn't know whether they meant Sylvia or Garland. Then we had people writing about "Jones" with it unclear whether they meant N or M. Now we have two called "Dom" to add to the confusion. But now I realise it doesn't actually matter. The reader can assume what he or she likes and the training reports are still valuable.

NOT OUR TRENGOVE: From AFL Twitter: Trengove to miss a month after knee injury: http://afl.to/1eaJmEz

A merger can only happen if another team is introduced as the TV rights agreement requires an 18 team competition. Can't see that happening - but relocation of a team to Tasmania isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

The innovation I'd like to see us proceed with is an equivalent to a 'Dreamtime at he G' or ANZAC day game played with a regular opponent on the night of Easter Sunday. It needs more than just the choice of timeslot. Perhaps it could be something like a 'Kid's Game' with all school children given free entry and a kick on the ground at the close of play (subject to weather, of course). I've never understood why the AFL doesn't have a game on a Sunday night when the following day is a public holiday. (I'm against Sunday night games when the Monday is a working day). It would be good to work with another club to put the package together and present it to the AFL.

Who knows whether Neeld even wanted to be back in the AFL in 2014? Perhaps the best strategy for him is to stay away from any form of AFL involvement for at least 12 months before returning. Another way to look at this would be to argue that Ratten "got another gig" in the AFL straight away as he had no employable possibilities anywhere else so took whatever he could get whereas Neeld has more strings to his bow and looked beyond the AFL. I just think making an argument that Ratten is somehow better than Neeld because Neeld's not coaching in the AFL in 2014 is a superficial argument based on short-term evidence. It's rather like arguing that Kevin Rudd would never be PM again after being dumped by his own party in 2010.

I wouldn't have thought he has no AFL future. If he was a good Assistant Coach before - and that seems to be well accepted - there's no reason to believe he can't be a good Assistant Coach again. It's arguable he might be even better given his Senior Coaching experience and what he learned from that. In fact, I fully expect to see him as an Assistant Coach at Carlton in 2015 (if Mick Malthouse is still there).

Any reason he couldn't be both?

The talent pool, in theory, is the same size now as it was when the then VFL was a 12 team competition. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the Australian population in 1986 (last year of the 12 team competition) was 15.6 million. Today, ABS estimates the population to be 23.4 million. That's a 50% increase in population - exactly the same as the competition size increase from 12 to 18 teams. Granted, there's more sporting opportunities today for people to choose to participate in; but there's also a significantly greater financial reward to entice footballers than there was in 1986 so I expect some who would not have chosen football as a career then (because they foresaw better financial opportunities elsewhere) were lost to the game.

Agree with the above except I think you're being generous when you say "We have made consistently bad decisions for a decade." It's a lot longer than that. I'd go with half a century.

While the idea of 'zones' is attractive because of the ability for the club to work within their zone to develop a culture and support base within it, the previous experience of zoning showed that some zones just happen to better than others which consigns those clubs with inferior zones to fewer selectable players.

So, is there a "permission to train" list for non-listed players at this time of the year too? Reason I ask is speculation about the reason for the "permission to train" list prior to the draft period each year. One suggestion was the need for proper insurance to cover non-listed players in case of injury. Presumably if that's the reason then (and I don't know if it is) the same logic should apply now.

Talking of meltdown, does anyone know whether there is (a) anything in the players' enterprise bargaining agreement about training outdoors when it's over 40 degrees and (b) could WorkSafe stop training under these conditions?

I hope Mark Neeld and Carey have a mutually beneficial experience. Just because he failed as our Senior Coach doesn't mean everything else he has done or will do will be a failure. But I can't help wondering if Carey is prepared for Mark Neeld wanting to make a Year 8 boy School Captain.

Not quite. If it had try to pretend to be national but really just be a Melbourne/Geelong competition it probably wouldn't exist except as some form of amateur league. The economics don't stack up without full integration of the country's most populous state.

Umm...how about us over the last few years?

That's an outrageous comment. I think you'll find alcohol is less than 10,000 years old.

Everybody trains in "blocks" now. I don't know how we coped before the term "block" was first used to explain training programs.