Little Richard

Frighteningly detailed story. I like it.

Shock horror - the main delistings and trading thread was started in May.

We at Demonland would happily endorse that deal.

Don't mind that though, you never know what we're planning. The Tyson trade came out of nowhere, so something like that could happen again this season. Fingers crossed.

Our first rounder and someone like Howe might get the job done, only because his knees might lower his value. Otherwise, I don't think O'Meara commanding two first rounders is impossible at all.

Emphasis on the fact that we finally have a plan in place.

Oh my, yes please. Jaeger is a genuine freak.

It goes even further back than that, when we drafted atrociously in the mid 2000's. We still pay for that now - if we'd drafted good quality players back then, they'd be our senior leaders and we wouldn't be in this pickle. A la St Kilda - everyone is whining about how they beat us, when our young players are good. I agree that our young players are better than theirs, but ours don't have Riewoldt, Joey Montagna, Sam Fisher and Dempster (etc) leading them. These are guys who've been at the club for years and have had plenty of time to ingrain themselves into the fabric of the culture and mentor the young players. Our youngsters haven't had these mentor figures, and that is a fact. It's just the way it is and it will take time to remedy this.

It's not close to the Neeld years and you know that. We were consistently losing by 100 points each week and the players obviously did not care one iota. For the most part, the players have been trying hard this year. They look hurt when we lose. The fact is that many of them are just not good enough. We're getting there, I have faith. It's just a slow slog.

For once we have a plan in place and there is clear, steady improvement. Not as rapid as we'd all like, but there is obvious improvement. We are coming from further back than any side ever has. We finally have a nucleus of good, young players who'll mature together and pull the club upwards with them. We'll be paying for past mistakes for at least a couple more years and we just have to weather it.

That's essentially it in a nutshell. More patience is required at the moment, which is a big ask after so long in the shite. The right people are in place.

I think it's a mix of not being confident and not knowing the guys you are playing with as well as we need to. This is inevitable with such high turnover of players and should be less of a factor the more they play together. The confidence should come as the players settle into and understand the game plan better. It might not be so apparent to us at the moment, what they are trying to do, but I think that when it all comes together it will be much more effective and much more attractive to the supporters. Geelong was a glimpse of this. The fact is that Roos has been working hard on building a good defence - he stated that when he first came on board. We're slowly improving in terms of offence (which isn't helped by having key personnel missing, in Pedersen and Kent, or not having them at all). I have faith that we will get there, but the patience required is so infuriating. We should get paid to be members at this rate.

We have been handballing to stationary players or players already under pressure for as long as I can remember. How do we stop this?

You would hope so. If Max left, we'd be well and truly bent over in the ruck division.

If Andrew Pridham thought his statement would help, he was off his head. It's only ignited it even further. "If you're booing Adam Goodes I've got bad news for you," Pridham told Fairfax Media. "You're a racist". PS: For all my comments and views here, I woudn't boo Adam myself. I'm not a big fan, but I reserve boos for the lowest of the low, like Ballantyne and formerly Campbell Brown.

So if an indigenous bloke in the crowd was booing a white player, is that racist?

I have no doubt that the majority of people booing him do it because he is a divisive figure and often times a bit of a [censored]. A small percentage of those people probably do it because they are racist. However, to say that 'If you boo Adam, you are racist' is bloody ridiculous. How many other indigenous or players of other race get booed in the league? Anyway, there's no doubt that he is a great footballer and has done a lot of good for a lot of people. Not quite deserving of an Australian of the year award though in my book.

Before you get howled down, McDonald and our first rounder for Treloar and Prestia? Edit: I'd rather we kept McDonald, but it's an interesting scenario. Edit 2: Obviously would be separate trades.

That is true Deeluded, and apparent in players like Hannebery who came from Xavs. It's more about the kind of player we were going for - choir boys, who for the most part seemed to come from the private school system. And that was clearly a massive fail in the arse, when we ignored players like Darling and Martin.

I don't think Davey was soft at all. He had brain fades at times, but didn't stand out as soft to me. Was a quality player. Edit: Was a quality player, most of the time.

Oh okay. Well I'm sure there have been plenty doing that recently.

That should have been this year OD. I'm not sure how long I'll continue. I know we've improved a bit but it's just not enough for me, I just don't have the patience to wait another 4 years until we make the finals. Up to each supporter whether or not they continue and if they decide not to, I wouldn't judge them for it. It's completely justified.

This was definitely the penultimate moment that really threw us in the crap after a struggle that was bad enough. We had to manage the list very well after Daniher's period - if we didn't recruit well to replace an ageing list with very poor young talent, we were always going to spend a long time in the cellar. And we recruited worse than anyone could have imagined. BP was a result of all those very poor appointments. People who had little real skill and knowledge in successfully running a football club. We as the members are the ones who have to pay for it the most.

Surely we've had a few 'tipping points' before this? For some it seems as though every loss is a tipping point.

Well it's not a soccer pitch, it's a football/cricket ground. And it's the best cricket ground in the world. So next time if they're not happy, they can play soccer elsewhere.