La Dee-vina Comedia

Hawk the Demon's motives for raising this issue might be questioned, but the specific questions he has asked are not unreasonable. Nor are they particularly important. Morgan Stanley might have been selected because they provided the best proposal to the club's request for expressions of interest from potential fund managers. The $10 million from Leighoak may have been earmarked for a different purpose. I don't see what the problem is with the investment strategy not being ready by November 2022. It's not like the money would be sitting idle. I'd rather take the time to get it right. All the above might be wrong answers, but unless someone's embezzled the Leighoak proceeds and the club isn't aware of it, I doubt whether any other answer would change people's perceptions about the Board's actions.

The term is no longer in use today, but am I recalling correctly that the term "ruck rover" was created to explain the role Ron Barassi had in the Melbourne team? Unfortunately, my memories of RDB as a player are of him in a Carlton jumper.

Thanks WJ. Is the condition considered to be a sports-related injury or illness? Or is it a condition that anyone could get? I hope he can get better and have a good life from hereon.

Is this game played with proper rules? That is, 4 quarters of normal length plus time on; 4 interchange plus sub with usual rotation limits; limit to 23 players for the whole game; 4 field umpires; etc? (If not, what's the point? And if so, what's the point? As you can tell, I don't like pre-season, practice matches.)

I think the Roughead/Franklin recruitments were more than just luck. Yes, Hawthorn was lucky that both players happened to be available that year, but I recall some story about how Hawthorn played their draft hand in a way that encouraged Richmond to pick Deledio and Tambling with their first two choices and not one of either Roughead or Franklin. In addition, as we know, it's not just good selections that matter; it also needs a good development program to be in place. And a good gameplan helps, too.

Story is behind a paywall. What is (or was) his disability and what's he up to now?

About one-third of our players will have their names regularly mis-spelt on Demonland.

I agree with both these points. Having said that, I'm not sure whether there would be much value in a summary of what the Board discusses. Any juicy bits will be left out of the disclosed information.

Didn't know that still existed. I don't think I've heard the name for 40 years!

I'm torn on the issue of publication of the minutes. While I appreciate the idea that it should support the principle of democracy, the reality is that if minutes are made public, two things happen. Firstly, debate at meetings becomes stifled because people might not want their comments and opinions shared widely and because information that might be sensitive for commercial or political reasons might be disclosed. Secondly, to avoid the latter problem, the minutes themselves are more likely to be a sanitised version of the discussion. That's not helpful to future discussions of the Board. On balance, I'm against the disclosure of the minutes as I believe the Board should not feel constrained by concerns as to publication of what they might say and because any future Boards should be able to look back at minutes of past meetings and know that they fully record what was discussed. I'm speaking from experience here having recorded minutes for very senior government meetings as well as being a member of a government board that had to make highly sensitive decisions.

That's a really good point. Players need to be shown how a minor change in the way the ball is held will alter its trajectory as it falls to the boot. If you're spinning the ball around, you're not concentrating on having the ball set into your hands correctly and in a consistent manner. They should look at Brendan Fevola as an example (of goal kicking, not lifestyle). He held the ball in an unusual way, but it was identical every time he kicked and it worked well for him.

Maybe you should change your name to LimpingCivilWar. (Seriously, I hope you recover quickly.)

Typical of Demonland. Langdon has been mis-spelled as Longden

I find this to be an amusing statement. It's like saying Adam Lambert's best performances with Queen were in his audition for the lead singer role. (It's OK, Picket. I know exactly what you mean and I appreciate your snake-defying visits to Casey.)

While I don't agree with much of what you argue regarding the election process, I'm grateful for this post as it tells me some things I didn't know. In particular, the votes for Reed and McCoy. I assume you mean that they received 22.6% and 19.8% of votes cast, which, seems to me to be a large number for non-incumbents when the club is in a good position. They should be pleased with that result. And while the site published the figures for the Members' Resolution, it was poorIy presented as it didn't say which of the two numbers was for and which against - only that the necessary threshold of 75% wasn't reached.

1. Because we didn't review the 2018 Preliminary Final 2. Because we don't have a home base 3. It's all Jack Watts' fault

As a matter of interest, are you using a colloquial expression to mean Verral is rucking against Gawn and being beaten badly or that Gawn is actually teaching him properly?

Sigh... Facts are stubborn things, aren't they?

Not that figure. I was asking where you got the travel time from. You wrote: "...the rest of the population travel large distances to work everyday 8-9 hours a day in peak hour ..."

Seriously? Where did you pluck this figure from?

I reckon there's a PhD thesis awaiting someone with the time to analyse Demonland over the last decade or more looking at subject trends. I suspect the "home base" discussion peaks in February every year because there's basically nothing else to talk about. Let's get the season proper underway as quickly as possible!

Do any other clubs have multiple training sites? I seem to recall Richmond built something out at Craigieburn. Do they use that as well as Punt Road? What about Essendon...do they still use Windy Hill for anything as well as Tullamarine?

Our "brand" is the name of a major city rather than a suburb or a country town. We shouldn't need a bit of signage on a building to market ourselves. There are far greater and better opportunities available to us than that. It just needs some creative thinking. To be honest, I'd rather we spent money building relationships with the City of Melbourne and anything else which is symbolic of Melbourne the city than spend it on a home base.

Presumably having list depth doesn't just help when there are injuries. It should also help intraclub training so that when a team of "probables" is playing the "rest", a higher quality of the "rest" should help improve the "probables". Imagine how poor the "rest" must have been in 2013. It would not have been much help to improve the capabilities of the then "probables" in any intraclub contests.

I often wonder about the value of playing a "probables" team against the rest. Firstly, it means the forwards are playing on inferior quality defenders, and vice versa. Is that really helpful? Secondly, how would a player feel if left out of the "probables" team? The latter point shouldn't really matter, as that's what happens with selection each week anyway - but nevertheless, I suspect it does hurt some players more than others.