robbiefrom13

Qwerty, you have agenda

the AFL doesn't like 'the ramifications" - and that would be a bigger issue for the AFL than their not liking systematic drug cheating in the league, or Essendon's pursuit of loopholes when caught? If "the ramifications" (spell it out: = loss of money) is a bigger issue than drugs in sport, then the AFL thinks like Little and the turd (and like them, assumes the football public will endorse such values). Ramification of this? The AFL makes the scale of Essendon's corruption of the game seem so much smaller by comparison. But their clear message to us - "Get with the programme, naives - this is the Twenty-first Century! On with the show!..."

Lleyton Hewitt's manner playing and talking about himself finished my interest in tennis as a spectator sport. I was embarrassed as an Australian, and personally put off by him. When tennis comes on the news now, and I see as normal further displays of that sort of behaviour, or the aggro women, it confirms my loss of interest. I'm not even curious any more. It's like for years Jim O'Dea spelled St Kilda, or Mitch Robinson has been the face of Carlton, in my mind - like for many of us, reacting to the Kangaroos is really just about Boomer Harvey - and I just don't want to know. it doesn't entertain me, so much do I dislike it. My father gave footy away years ago, though he was a keen Essendon supporter for many years. He told me what had tipped the scales for him - I forget what it was, but at the time I know I saw his point and thought yes, but that doesn't do it for me. But something could, I have no doubt. Neeld was a fair chance, if he'd lasted much longer. If Essendon gets away with this cheating, and AFL becomes no more than the fake wrestling, I expect it will kill my interest in AFL. I know I stopped wanting to go to games when we were tanking. I did not respect the Eagles' premiership when they bulked up and crushed everyone else, because I thought they had cheated; other years I admire or hate the Premiers, but their success I just disregarded, waited for them to go away. I think Essendon getting off would be a level of corruption that would forever taint footy with "yes but..." I'm not making a threat or anything, not trying to be punitive, not bitter, or angry - just not into it, like I'm not into Hollywood demolition/shooting/flagwaving type movies. If I knew the AFL was allowing cheats to prosper, I can't see why anybody would go on imagining the game was still tribal or sporting competition. Essendon are exposed here as having seriously attempted to turn football into a whatever-it-takes space-race, defended with QC's and lies. If they get to do that, hijacking the competition and re-writing the de facto rules, and are not hounded out of the game in order to save the game, I can't see myself caring about going along to see their new invention. It's just not what I'd pay to watch - and I'd be astonished if there weren't huge numbers of others who would leave too. Check out any cathedral this Sunday, and see what's happened there.

somebody should be saying we will finish in the eight. We're supporters FFS. Every other team does not get better every year, they just don't. There are train-wrecks, slow slides, alienating coaches, injuries, old age - plenty of reasons why other clubs can go past us, going backwards. Plus, Roos, management stability, young players on the way up, and confidence beginning to return - we are well set up to make faster progress than others. Why does it have to be gloom, gloom? "Where do we finish on the ladder?" Are we wannabe expert commentators, or supporters? My answer is out of hope, not impartial and cynical seen-it-all take-my-word-for-it-I-know "experience". Some of us are no better than the hacks writing in the papers! My prediction is based on the future I see coming, not the past behind us. Robbie Flower said he never played a game he didn't believe we could win. Why not likewise for supporters? Bugger it, I'm looking for us to make the 8.

if they have been charged, the AFL is in contempt of WADA and everything it stands for. How long must we hesitate, WADA? - and this is not ambulance-chasing, it is constantly looking down the road to see what's keeping the fire brigade.

The difference between WADA and the AFL here is that WADA's integrity is not on the line - not unless they make it so. The AFL are just about discredited now, no matter what they do, in many people's eyes. WADA remains WADA, unless they chicken out and tell the world that they are actually toothless in the face of a big player. (Smiling with false teeth?) AFL - integrity in tatters. WADA - the watchdog, though with credibility there to be destroyed, if they so choose. I'm waiting and watching. C'mon, self-respect, fellers, please! (According to Kierkegaard, if you dare, you may lose your footing for a time, but if you don't dare you lose yourself.)

I disliked him - intensely - because he struck me as self-absorbed and abusive. He did not treat the players in my team with respect. He made no adjustments when the team played badly and the players were unhappy. And it took a long time, with the club bleeding badly all the while, before he was removed. That's why I got fairly intense about him. Not my kind of guy. He made sport unnecessarily unpleasant for those who love it. Attack me if you like, I don't mind - I recognise other people think differently about sport and succeeding at it, and I don't say they are necessarily wrong; it's just my take on it. I see sport in a context of human relationships and endeavours, and I recognise that this equates to admitting my own bias. I'm only posting now in response to your "mystification", explaining how I at least felt. I never blamed him for other stuff like the global financial crisis, obviously - my intense dislike had very clear and specific issues with him. I wouldn't wish Neeld on anyone, no matter who admires him (but, if Essendon want him, I'm not surprised, and be it on their head if it affects them as I expect it may. If it turns out well, I will put it down to them being thugs, so that Neeld was a good fit).

So Essendon must be looking to shore things up a bit in the "care of our players" department.

Hassa Mann was one. Flower, just about a mid. Ricky Jackson didn't bother, and I don't remember Greg Healy playing dirty. Woey wasn't a thug. There'd be plenty of examples. I s'pose the footballers you meet are mostly the ones you seek out, rather than the other way round, d-l? Nice to see Robinson dumped, by the way...

EFC is filibustering till they won't care if their by-then ex-players are suspended - just as they have not cared about the welfare of their players throughout. If the AFL and ASADA or WADA don't utterly destroy the EFC for their flagrant, uncaringly arrogant and unrepentant lawlessness, then I sincerely hope that over the next few years, once it finally sinks in what's been done to them, the 34 sue the EFC out of existence. Clean sport cannot stretch to include the EFC. All your own work, Hird, Little and we-have-yet-to-find-out whoever else it has been - you most loathed people in all the history of Aussie rules football. For your own gain, you cheated and now hack open all the loopholes you can, letting out into the league what absolutely has to be hunted and eradicated lest its temptation seeps into other weak-moralled and pragmatic officials' thinking. The journos and lawyers try to fluff this up, but what EFC have done is and has been throughout a strike at the very heart of sport. EFC must be seen to have been totally deleted, and quickly for preference. The greater disaster still to come is if EFC are seen to have benefitted at all.

decent, for a start. build some trust. it works.

great post, nutbean. that's what a supporter looks like!

yes. Are Essendon members?

Break ranks, tell the truth. Blow the whistle. Step out of the "everyone hold your breath, we can still get out of it" mentality, and try to find where decency lies in this shambles of a club, in the grip as it is of such cheating creeps. When Essendon started going vague, and then suing the umpire, time to start blowing some loud and public whistles. A challenge to the Board at least, and get the issues out in the public eye. How do they live with themselves, waiting to see if they will get away with it? Tip the first domino, damn it! Not one of them has had the decency to do it! I once saw Big Carl king-hit Madden (I think it was) at a boundary throw-in at Windy Hill right in front of me. I couldn't utter a squeak for the rest of the game. Some things just aren't right. But none of this drugs affair has provoked a single Essendon person to step away from the crap. If you haven't got a whistle to blow, then demand answers, and challenge if they clearly are not going to tell anybody any truth about this. Hird and Little and whoever else have destroyed the reputation of the club. Doesn't anybody there object? Where's the love of the game among all these Essendon people? Not one of them!

Schwarz before Lyon or Neitz, please - and Jones simply isn't in that league... He'd look silly up there beside Norm Smith, Barassi, Flower and perhaps Schwarta.

no amount of nice guys chatting to us from the tumbril is going to change anything. I think Essendon members ought to have put some pressure on the club, a long time ago; you are complicit by inaction in the face of outrageous behaviour in the organisation you are members of. Where has been the revolt against such unacceptable behaviour? Chatting with us doesn't cut it, you should see that. You have failed to do what had to be done.

how about keep it, until late in the season when some of our players are starting to really make things happen? whichever season that might be... i mean, when there's few of our guys who have arrived, in the sense of not just being our best, but getting the job done, knocking over other teams' best, and being a story really worth telling. Why run mediocrity up the mast? Robbie inspires us...

"Every day, closer to death..." - the merry band of Demonland.

Robbie Flower said he always went into every game thinking we could win. I think he meant it. Otherwise, why bother? This thread is like listening to the experts all holding forth on who's useless and what draft pick would be overs and so on. We hold on against the crowing naysayers, don't we? Suspend disbelief if we have to, but stick with it, talk up the good things. Like, Roos is a proven developer of under-respected players. And almost every year some club comes up out of nowhere, like we did in 87. Why would I want to set down a guess against my team doing any good - so I can win a prize for knowing stuff before it happens? So I can have my 15 minutes like GNF did? No, I'd prefer to be a supporter. Dunno what will happen, but so long as I can stand it, I'm there for them. And f off if you want me to tell you we're no good.

sport is an activity of people - people exhilirated by ability, cameraderie, imagination and in the case of football, love of the green grass you play on. delete business

when human beings are seen as commodities, or product, or stock, sorry, but you are in the badlands...

This forum polarises on Jack Watts, and to me the polarities are not that much different to the two differing styles of Neeld and Roos. I rejoiced at the appointment of Roos, thinking it meant a shift towards people-aware respectful solidarity as a club, players-and-coach working together to build and grow. An end to disrespect. The arrival of can-do and encouragement and building the sort of esprit that Norm Smith fostered. To me, this news is like a litmus test of philosophy. Very disappointed if it turns out Roos can't see the significance to our culture of retaining and developing the latent talent of Jack Watts. I remember thinking during the dark days of Neeld that if the club failed to value or develop Jurrah and Watts, or hounded them out along with Brad Green, I was through with the whole thing. Went very close to giving it all away, then. It becomes obvious that the old-fashioned supporter, who thinks in terms of players and loyalty, is really out of touch with the new AFL landscape. I see it as a sort of corporatised pragmatism, and I hate it. It makes me think of economic rationalism being applied to the world of sport. Just about as repugnant as Essendon's cheating - abandoning drug-free principles in the pursuit of success being in my mind just about matched by abandoning respect for individuals of ability and loyalty. I know how hopeless it is to hang on too long to a player who is past it, or is never going to make it, but I'd hope for a good coach to be able to make some difference. Success at the price we are apparently willing to pay is not all that appealing to me - the price seems too high. I want success, but not if it means a Neeld approach is applied to anyone. I'm not sure I belong in this club. All very disillusioning, I think.

I would like to think there are some non-negotiable untouchable pillar-of-the-club things. Only let them go if there really is no choice. Even after Ablett and Buddy, you'd think clubs would still want to be able to have some core players locked in in their thinking. Stability counts, in every area of life; ongoing uncertainty is ultimately corrosive... I'd have thought Trengove would be a lock, for character, especially showing loyalty in our blackest days, and for actual ability (so long as he has now put the injury behind him - and Richmond's interest indicates that they at least are convinced he has). But Neeld's use of him puts Trengove a long way out on a limb, I suspect. If the general reaction to the thought of Neeld is as strong among the players as it is among Deemonlanders, and all the more so for their having refused to believe it for so long, then having been Neeld's pin-up boy (and that failed so embarrassingly) may be an albatross around the neck that you just can't forget. He can't, and the other players can't either. Psychologically, distancing themselves from the worst, most abusive and destructive experience perhaps in the club's history, could be a good thing. Grimes too? - but we don't know what the dynamics of the playing group were in those godawful times. Maybe Trenners was aligned too closely with Neeld, all good cop to Neeld's bad cop; and now his departure closes what appears to be still lingering. All speculation, I know, and without any facts. I'm just trying to look at it from a different perspective that makes trading Trengove consistent with "building culture". A lot of posters here have taken a very unsentimental view of "the cattle". They may be right, but I can't see what "culture" means if you deny it any sense of belonging, any sentiment, any esprit. Roos is here to build culture - I want to know how does this fit with building culture? (And don't tell me "winning culture" - that's just a slogan, and not actually culture.)

Mine too. I watched videos of him all night last night. One of the things he did was he reduced complicated things. Caught in traffic, he would simplify it, with turning, going around, paddling the ball on the ground in his first game I remember, till he got the feel of being there, and in one of the 5-minute bits of vision on here you see him (faster than thinking, as he did) turn on a sixpence and then take a half step backwards before being aligned with the way through - and off he went. Robbie was like the Ockham's Razor of football - he just simplified the most complicated things on the field, and then tore through with off-the-show skill. But it was that "knowing how to get through" that is unparallelled in my opinion. Maybe this came of his total commitment to being there, being in a Melbourne jumper. He said he arrived at the game every time, with the view that we could win it. He was entirely unphased about his celebrity, genuinely seemed not to be comfortable at all with it (I loved the story that when he did something really good at tennis, he'd be looking down fiddling with the strings on his racquet while people made their comments); it was like being there was the issue, being part of the Melbourne footy club, not himself. In total faith. Comments from supporters of other clubs say a lot about how watching him was getting the magic of the game, and no-one ever took it as a tribal thing to barrack against him. Dipper's comments about when he'd busted his shoulder illustrate the aura of the man. He set standards beyond anyone. Total commitment makes a lot of things different I think. In everything - like marriage, children, learning something, playing music, whatever. Robbie always had it, way beyond anyone I ever saw playing footy. Maybe Barassi, though he didn't have the sublime giftedness. (Nothing like the starey-eyed Essendon or Mitch Robinson focus, either. Just fully active immersion.) Robbie Flower has been a sort of pole star for me, not only in football. His passing doesn't change that, but the world is somehow a lonelier, less supportive place, without him still being here.

if the compensation's good, then it's all good. Then again, we don't know what Roos knows/thinks: maybe nothing to say at all...