Jaded No More

As much as it pains me because I'm a MASSIVE Pedo fan, we can't carry all of Hogan, Watts, Tmac and Pedo, and it's obvious Tmac is the new Gary Ablett Senior. If Tyson and Watts are fit, I would drop Pedo and Melksham I know they won't actually drop Melksham, but I can't deal with him as a footballer. He is awful!

Total understatement. Oliver- as good as any of Carlton's seasoned midfielders. Freak of nature.

100% correct. We were fortunate that Carlton had 2 on the bench, one of which is Cripps who is a star. I hope the kid recovers well. Always terrible seeing a young player go down. Luckily it's not the knee! I was weirdly confident we will win. This was the calmest I have been at a game, even though it was a close contest and I knew there was a lot riding on the result. I kept saying to my dad we will prevail because we are a class above. We played at probably 30% of our best, Carlton were at 100%. We pushed through at the end and won some vital contests and held on for the 4 points. We were so mature in the way we handled this match, missing 5 of our best 10 players, and our entire engine room. Very proud of Oliver, Trac and ANB for stepping up in the absence of Jones, Viney and Tyson. I thought they were exceptional. ANB was brilliant in the last quarter. He has been good all year, and it's obvious his best role is inside mid. That he does some damage on the scoreboard is even better. Great work from our defensive unit too. Best game I've seen Wagner play, and as usual Jetta is a freak. If he doesn't make the AA team, it is as rigged as I believe it to be. He is the best small defender in the competition. I would love for someone to prove me otherwise! Hogan and Gawn will be better for the run. And yes I know Joel Smith was rusty, but gees he has some impressive attributes. I'd love to stick with him. His agility, his speed, his disposal, are all top notch. Love him.

Smith did some good things. It's his second AFL game! Give him a break. Hogan didn't do a lot but his presence further up the ground was very important. Gave Tom more space up forward.

Good teams find a way to win. We did that. Bad game. Bank the points. Move on.

MelkShame needs to go away. Far. Far. Away.

Poor discipline is costing us. Need to pull our head in!

Please, we are just using the footy incredibly poorly. Umps have had no influence here.

Lewis is seriously garbage.

Amazing news to have Hogan back! Hope the boys lift for him.

I think we can all admire Watts for his resilience, not because he hasn't had to take time off to deal with depression, as depressions is NOT a sign of weakness. I think what we can all appreciate and admire about him is his resilience to keep pushing himself to improve and to stay at the one club, despite the truly awful garbage he's had to put up with.

What? If Vince did the same thing, he would have the same punishment. It has nothing to do with them being fringe players. You work for the club and you break club rules, you are punished. That these 4 dumbarses happen to be fringe players makes it all the more of a pathetic action, as you'd think they'd want to help themselves get a senior game, not hinder their chances.

I've been very vocal about my disgust towards the actions of Bugg, but gees you can't even compare this low life scumbag to Bugg. He should not just be sacked from his role, but banned from playing footy. That is assault, if he did that in the street, he'd have a criminal record.

Nothing to do with Melbourne. It's a case of Bugg doing this literally 4 days after Houli got done for 4 weeks. The stupidity beggars belief. The AFL want to stamp this out, and rightly so. Bugg getting 6 might be 'unfair', but it is the only thing the AFL can do to really deter players from hitting other players.

Yeah I don't know why you'd waste your time sending him to the VFL? He would have done a heap of running while not playing so not sure how much fitness he would have lost. Unless he feels he needs some match practice in the VFL it would be laughable sending him to Casey.

Anyone have the inside word if Hogan will play?

Seems genuinely remorseful. Glad he and the club didn't defend the action or try to reduce the sentence. Cop it and move on. Has a long road back now.

And hopefully we can put this argument to bed now. The captain of our club and the club as a whole are very unhappy with his actions. As should we all. It was a terrible thing to do, and a poor way to represent our club. I'm looking forward to all this being over tonight. Cop the ban and move on with our lives.

Why has the club not released any word on Viney and Tyson? There are pics and rumours floating around that Viney has gone in for surgery? This is seriously a concern. Usually no injury news is BAD news!!!

I appreciate your training reports and that you are a staunch defender of the club and the players, but there is seriously no defending this action. None of these guys deserve a life ban, but they broke very simple team rules. If they can't manage to stay off alcohol for 6 days, we have a bigger issue here. Given both the seniors and Casey lost, it would have been best for everyone had they not compromised their recovery by behaving unprofessionally. Who knows how this impacted their performance at Casey, let alone how badly it stuffed up our team selection. It might not be a big deal to you, but it's a big deal to the club, so much so, that we chose to compromise team selection by banning them from AFL for a week. That is a really really big call when we are struggling so much with injuries, and this was another 'must win' game. I don't think this was just a matter of 4 players have one beer too many, they obviously drank enough that it impacted their training performance the next day. That these 4 are actually battling to get a game, makes it all the more baffling. JHK just got a contract extension too! I have no idea what they were thinking. The most disappointing thing is that some of these fools are going to play this week due to circumstances, whereas I don't think they'd get a senior game for weeks if the situation was different, and rightly so.

Totally unnecessary. We are all covered with Tom and Pedo in the ruck. The last thing we need is to be even less mobile, given how depleted our midfield is. I rather plonk Gawn at FF and let Tom ruck for most of the game if Gawn is struggling for fitness.

Needs to be Gawn given our depleted midfield at the moment. He can lead from the centre. Or Tmac if he is the relief ruck. Important that we have someone in the middle, even though I love Jets and he is probably the most consistent player I've ever seen at the MFC, and should be knighted!

Not sure how you can blame Mission and the fitness department. Not his fault the AFL crucified us with 4 weeks of short breaks plus the biggest road trip in footy. Short of literally pulling players out of matches, what could he have done? We had a light training load for this period of time, but our game style combined with these short breaks, is something he can't control. Plus Viney's injury seems to be a recurrence, rather than something new, and Tyson is an impact injury.

I guess we will have to wait for the medical report as well. If Mills has a fractured jaw, and Lewis got 4 down to 3 for fracturing Cripps' jaw, I would think it would be 6.

I would not appeal anything. We already said we are not condoning his behaviour, and this is not how we want the club to be represented. Appealing it on the grounds that Houli got 4 because of some rubbish character references, is irrelevant semantics. We all know the AFL is a biased organisation, and we all know Houli and Bugg are put in difference baskets, although they both did the wrong thing and both deserve the same penalty. If he gets 5 or 6, we take it and we move on.