robbiefrom13

I wonder whether Paul Roos would think in terms of "stamping his authority" on the players? Doubt it, myself.

but jumbo you just keep on talking...

what about "the Schwab era"? Who knows how many decisions had his fingerprints on them. But he is a common d(en)ominator...

showing off again, H? For a moment there, I thought you were trying to describe something, but no - just trying to be clever. It's a yawn, H.

like. My whole post was opposing Whispering Jack's idea that the racism or otherwise of Neeld should be investigated and determined. At the outset I aligned myself with Baghdad Bob's doubt that there can be any truth about this issue. My whole post was intended, so it appears to me, re-reading it, as a case in support of Baghdad Bob's contention. What I hoped to do was to suggest that our use of the term "racism" has not yet been properly thought-out, and that where we may be tempted to use it, we may be uttering nonsense in that current use of the term is quite likely unrealistic - expecting what is impossible, while at the same time ignoring what is really serious. My speculation was that what was concerning in Neeld's attitudes were not targeting race so much as diversity. I am tempted to say "but what would I know?" It's never my intention when posting to put up "an annoying post full of self-indulgent generalisations when it appears you're not in a position to know. Far too much guess work and assumptions" - in writing the post I supposed that thoughts about racism derived from a conference of indigenous leaders from a third of the planet, meeting for three days to discuss racism, were sort of relevant and with some basis. Not so, though, eh? Anyway, thanks, Elusive T. It's nice to feel you have been read - even defended, by somebody who wasn't even persuaded by my argument. Thankyou. Happy New Year.

Baghdad Bob says "even if there is a truth" - and I am inclined to agree. WJ, I read your posts with respect, but on this one I think you are off the mark. Here's why - The concept of "racism" is still a work in progress, and cannot yet be applied as an effective criterion of judgment; any attempt to clarify issues of racism must founder on the definition - or at least end up in irrelevance on account of the poor match between current understanding of the concept and attitudes and behaviours that worry us. In 2001 the United Nations were working on their convention against racism, and they organised three regional conferences to thrash out drafts, before combining them into the document they finally published. One of the three conferences was held at Sydney Uni, with representatives from indigenous peoples all around the Pacific rim, and I was able to get myself a ticket to the conference, as a spectator, on the basis of being a teacher of Aboriginal studies. I learned a lot, from the perspective of the victims of racism. For example, "Structural racism" is forcing Aboriginal kids to attend white-culture school - racism because in traditional Aboriginal culture they educated their kids differently, and in white society Aborigines are legally forced to have their children from the age of 5 raised under something entirely different to their own culture. I don't think you can argue that this is not racism: a dominant culture denying a minority people any respect or dignity in their own culture, and systematically squashing out that minority culture. For the minority culture, this is as serious as any names-calling. For these victims, racism is no simple matter; and it will not be easy for any society with a dominant culture and other subordinated minorities to fully avoid 'racism' unless it has a very strong commitment to pluralism and multi-culturalism on all fronts (obviously not the issue for Demonland...). My point is not to suggest that racism itself is unavoidable, but to highlight the almost inevitability of some people considering it racism when an inflexible mono-culture-minded person deals with racial minorities whose natural way of doing things is not in line with the controlling person's approach. We just haven't thought it through yet. Parallels? "Chastity", and "Honour", and "Sterling" were once positives - today they've pretty much evaporated; while "child abuse" has gained in focus and power. I'm not sure how we will end up looking at "racism". We are currently trying to avoid calling any person "fat" - in time we will either be able to explain exactly why it is so wrong, or we'll drop the scruple. I am one who thinks Neeld-style people will always be disrespectful (and prone to at-least-inadvertent "racism"), and ultimately ineffective because of it, through their intolerance of anything divergent. But is such an idea even practical, in relation to AFL? I'd love to know - not so as to be able to call someone racist, but rather to better understand how my footy team can become successful... My posts on the subject of Neeld were always at least partly motivated by my desire to get clear in my mind whether the approach that Neeld was taking really was as necessary as many posters assured us it was. I never felt we came to any conclusion on that philosophic question. Well then, what is the point of trying to identify racism where we don't know whether mono-culture is necessary or not? "Racism" clearly is a pejorative term, but what if it actually entails more than is realistic - at least, say, in the example of coaching AFL.. After all, Liam Jurrah chose to put himself in the AFL... Then again, if Neeld's sort of cultural inflexibility really is an agreed bad thing (be it racism or any other form of disrespect), how can it be excused in any circumstance? I didn't like Neeld's bully-boy style, and I felt very strongly that his "game-plan" was disrespectful of the particular way of playing the game that the indigenous players brought with them. I think Neeld's inflexibility and negativity and supposed abusiveness was everything that would be at the base of racism - and if we were now to exonerate him (all over again) from charges of racism, according to some definition of racism that we decided to use, we would be missing the point. I think Neeld's insistence on compliance made it virtually inevitable that he would be racist so long as he had indigenous players in his team. I thought Jurrah's ultimate reluctance to take the field under Neeld spoke volumes. But at the same time I also had the sneaking suspicion that there might be something self-righteous and hypocritical about sitting here in white-feller luxury and calling people racist... I do think that we are not yet clear on the rights and wrongs of all this, the pendulum is still swinging, and my reactions may be as much about my own personality as they are about any sociological established facts. At this point in time, in our culture, I think if we try to hammer out facts about the who said and thought what, and line them up for measure against some definition we have of "racism" today, it will not be establishing any absolute truth of "history" at all. Firstly because whatever we come up with will only be in terms of our current dominant-culture definitions, which are almost guaranteed to change (think for example of the changes in our attitudes since the 19th Century's concerning what is acceptable/appropriate treatment of your wife or your children or the mentally ill or those found committing crimes, etc - think of our changed attitudes towards colonisation and slavery, etc etc); and secondly, because any conclusions we make based on inquiry under those terms will fail to define the mass of problems that swarmed all over the club or indeed our indigenous players while Neeld was at the helm. WJ, yes, probably some people did say things against Neeld that were not best practice. But people are always getting away with some stuff. There are times when little good is served by trying to nail it all. As the values our society holds change, some of our investigations will seem wrong-headed. You must have noticed last week the royal pardon awarded to the heroic English code-breaker from the second world war, hounded under the then law for homosexuality, offered castration or prison, who suicided as a result. Sixty years later the pardon came, but with the grudging insult of the pardon being due to come into force not when it was announced (60 years later - bad enough!), but not until first thing next Tuesday! The bullying goes on. From my perspective, bullying is what must eventually be eradicated - and as we finally come to repugnance in one area of life after another, many of the inquiries held under interim definitions and understanding become embarrassing and as shameful as the original behaviours. Look at how the Catholic church used to deal with their pedophile priests. So, I suggest that we are not really in the position to sort out this matter yet. We need to grow, our society needs to grow, and any "history" we write now will embarrass us in the future. The Neeld era is at an end, and that is surely a good thing. Those who applauded it will now see the effectiveness of a very different approach, and they may learn from watching that; we all may. Meantime we can look on as other clubs continue with hard-man approaches. In time we may be able to clarify what went wrong at MFC under Neeld, but most of the answer will be in terms of sports psychology not yet clarified, I think. People's mistakes will be better evaluated when we have principles of sports player management agreed and clearly understood. And racism will if anything be a collateral defect, not the driver, I am sure.

that doesn't sit too well with Roos' own comment that the worse it got the more he warmed to the challenge. Why don't you all give up on Neeld? Thank God he's gone. Thank God we can believe it will be DIFFERENT now.

Glenfarclas 15

why would we look now for links to our horrible past? I do not want to see anything to do with Neeld's boundary-oriented game plan. Please, never again! I do not want to see fear again. I do not want to see us getting locked into the negativity of passing backwards, or the unimaginative and defeated mentality of kicking out to Jamar every time, or Jack Watts waiting for the rebound when our full-back kicks out, or any of the rest of it. Kick to Jamar when it makes sense to, go by the boundary if that really is the best option, etc - but, the "game plan" needs to be using creative football intelligence and skills, not by-the-numbers negative "set plays". I am counting on Roos to have a "game plan" based on opportunity and vision, with teamwork creating opportunity, and confidence giving rise to in-the-moment vision and execution. Something they will love playing. Neeld's whole mentality was Neeld-oriented: the players had to buy into Neeld, and with very few exceptions they shrivelled up in proportion to how much they tried to buy in. Roos says it is up to the players, and he's right. We will at last discover what they can do. Roos is building faith and confidence in his players, in themselves and in each other, as human beings and as footballers. He is clearly focusing on the basics of football - running to support and to create options, and skills in kicking, handballing, overlapping, shepherding, presenting, making it happen fast, etc. Roos has started from a very different place to Neeld, and from training reports and everything coming out of the club, there is no grounds for saying Roos is focused on "defence first". He is a motivator and encourager, hands-on and engaging personally; and he has recruited for a powerful skilled running team. No big predictions or condemnations. What Roos is up to appears to have almost nothing in common with what Neeld did or what his priorities were. You won't see "buy in" coming up as a big issue this year. That was the key every time our failed game plan got discussed under Neeld...

or watch a bird washing itself in the birdbath

so I must be uneducated, cognitively unaware and a Hippie. Thanks, Ding, for sorting that out for me! (Don't these arrogant self-proclaiming know-nothings ever learn??) Ding, this thread did not set out a case for homeopathy, so that a categoric evaluation of homeopathy could be based on a reading of the thread. And then, are we to conclude that you believe yourself to be a bit of an expert on the range of ludicrous beliefs that "the Hippy set" hold to, so that you consider yourself qualified to have a stab at ranking such beliefs in ludicrousness? Even on the basis of the placebo effect, homeopathy has to be conceded to produce SOME positive benefits, Ding - your incredulity and broad-brush dismissal notwithstanding. And I refrain from commenting on your punctuation. I wonder at the confidence of the Dings of the world, in the face of the proven effectiveness of a Roos. "Ding says 'No'..." More power to you Paul Roos, with whatever methods work for you. And quite a few of us - even in the face of Ding's denigration - have some idea what you are on about, and on this one, from our own experience, nod in agreement.

Roos is putting in place a lot of things I like, including this. I expect big success. Being better people should mean becoming better at doing whatever it is that you do.

Our players probably haven't been running out primed and feeling clear and positive about the game plan, since Bailey, and even then they had to deal with the Schwab factor. And Roos is probably a lot better than Hinkley. So, on what basis really do we predict their 2014 form? The team has months of preparation before the season kicks off. A huge part of that preparation will in effect be lifting the dead weight off, and redirecting them back into an enhanced version of the positive and joyful experience of the game that they knew in all those years before they got drafted to Melbourne. Improvement will be part Roos, part the relief of being delivered out of the tactical and psychological mess of the recent past, and part the delayed emergence of what talent they have always had. I bet Roos has a fix in the back of his mind on what these guys did to his Sydney team. Why wouldn't we (in the back of our minds at least) have faith? If not predicting the eight, at least declining to predict a mediocre-to-bad 2014....

you make a joke that goes wrong, you apologise. Why wouldn't you want to?

taking the walk with Roos?

thanks BD.

I agree with most of what Bedraggled Dee wrote, too - it's true; but I think it is only the empty half of the glass. The title of this thread remains a true statement too. It is not effectively rebutted by simply reiterating how Jurrah's glass was half emptied. Jurrah was Territorian of the Year (or whatever the title was), and shortlisted for something like Young Australian of the Year; he came to Melbourne with an extraordinary profile, not just talked up by the likes of Rudeboy but also people like Jimmy Stynes, Martin Flanagan, etc etc. There is real substance in the backstory. Maybe it would now take a miracle, or a chance in hell - but that's exactly the sort of player - and maybe person too - that Jurrah was when he was at Melbourne. If Liam Jurrah really has set his eyes on something, anyone who remembers him on the footy field should know how dumb it is to suppose he isn't able to make it happen. No matter what might appear obvious. Me, I have no idea, but I hesitate to assume I know, when it's Liam Jurrah we are considering. He was not stock-standard. Why would we feel good about pigeon-holing a guy who conformed to nobody's mould, and who thrilled us as he brushed aside "can't"? What is your point in trying to hose down his aim here?

gotta keep our standards up, eh Hoges! Yassir, don't let up on the vigilance front.. An uncle of mine worked with a fella who served in the First World War, in the desert in North Africa at one stage. Walking along chatting to another digger who'd been a dentist before joining up, my uncle's mate Albert was complaining of terrible tooth ache he'd been having. "Don't let the army dentists at you," advised the dentist, "wait till you get home; then get the whole lot out and get falsies like the rest of us." So Albert trudged on, and they walked through an old battle-field with skeletons poking up through the sand. One skull had a perfect set of teeth, and Albert remarked on this, and they stopped to admire them. "Do you reckon I could take out those teeth, and get them made up into a set for meself?" Albert asked the dentist. The dentist thought this might be possible, so they set to work with bayonets and prised all the teeth out of the skull, and put them in a tobacco tin, and then resumed their march. Albert forgot all about them. After the war was over, and Albert was back in peaceful Western Australia in a train going home to see his wife and two small children, his thoughts turned to the idea of wrapping his arms around his wife, who he hadn't seen for some years; and he thought about the children standing there too, and he hardly knew them and they'd be looking at him, and no doubt a bit unsure... and all he wanted was to get his arms round his wife. What to do? He pictured them all together on the platform, and all he could think of was his wife. As he thought about it, Albert hit upon the scheme of giving the children the presents he'd brought home for them, and while they were occupied opening them he could give his wife the hug he'd been dreaming of. That would surely work... So Albert fished around in his kit-bag, to find the presents for the kids and put them at the top, and in doing so his hand closed on a tobacco tin. "What's this?" he thought, and opening it saw the dead man's teeth. Albert told my uncle that he almost vomited on the spot, and hurled them tin and all out the window and sat there shaking uncontrollably. What had seemed a perfectly reasonable and even clever idea in the context of the war, suddenly - in peaceful country Australia with a wife and children waiting for him, whom he would smile at and kiss, daily for the rest of his life - Albert wondered what sort of a monster he'd become while in that war zone. Albert was a real nice bloke, according to my uncle. Getting Liam back into Melbourne, surrounded with his other life, and supported by people who rate him and who reinforce his identity as a magician on the footy field, part of a team that is not divided and dangerous but rather supportive and focused on forming character and teamwork and achieving positive goals - it could close the door on what he did in a previous life. We who were not there as part of the other world he has lived in, we cannot have any idea - but surely we can recognise that not everyone who did terrible things in a war zone is an unredeemable monster. Let him return to a place he apparently would prefer to be in! And shuttup pretending you have never strayed to the dumb side of the harmless little situations you've found yourself in!

wow! you know nothing. you never met the man. you contradict those who did, you contradict the Court that tried him ... or are you pulling my leg? I mentioned the guy, trying to suggest that in the event you don't necessarily think a person's mistake/crime/whatever is an albatross around their neck forever. I had had some experience of seeing a guy after he'd done far worse than Liam Jurrah did - and my experience was that I saw a nervous man who feared nobody would ever allow him to be anything other than his crime. You - who did not have this experience - tell me that my experience was wrong, and the other guy's fears were right. Fact is, Liam Jurrah did his part today, trying to come back after being in a bad place. You heroes feel pretty righteous about saying "no way!", do you? I don't think you have any idea what reality is. It's infantile theorising, slamming the door on those who made a mistake - as though you never did anything wrong. Oh - "crossed the line"? Your judgmentalism is the greater offence, in my opinion. Both the bloke I knew, and Jurrah, had pressures that don't excuse but certainly explain what they did wrong. You can explain where your malice and hatred and purity came from, can you? That your appalling comments can be understood and overlooked? Or do you say what neither Liam nor the bloke I knew said - that you were right to do it?

maybe he was there for people, not to kill them, but to be accepted back into the human race. Meantime it sounds like Liam is tipping the scales as best he can. How can you be so offensively, ignorantly, presumptuously superior? Or condemning? Better informed, and presumably better qualified, the judge listened to the facts and weighed it up and gave him 18 months minimum security. So you have the wit and wisdom to add your "reasonable" and "serious" speculations. You should seriously be ashamed.

I'm glad I don't share your reality.

Yes. I used to attend church regularly, in a past life. A bloke there who I had barely ever spoken to shot his wife after she really got under his skin. Gave himself up, and went to trial - all covered in the papers. Pretty messy story about what had been going on, out of which he got 18 months minimum security. Two years later I was at a different church, and there he was suddenly in front of me. Recognition and hesitation arrived on his face at once, but his eyes never moved away. No time to think, I stepped up and shook him by the hand and said g'day. "Good to see you," I said, calling him by his name - that was about all, but I have never forgotten it and for all I know perhaps he hasn't either. Well, anyway the more I've thought about it the surer it feels that I did the absolutely right thing.Fellow feeling - we are programmed for this. We recognise a fellow human being's need and hurts. Weighing it all up and passing judgment is not our business, thank goodness - we just recognise and reach out a hand. I did, and I'm not sorry at all. Learned something, that day, it seems to me. And I hope the poor fella has moved on and doesn't feel crushed by his past any more.

oh. anything illegal and you're out, now? ye gods

you'd have some kind of a clean-out, then, if you turfed every player who did something "unacceptable"... (odd, though, that the Courts that dealt with his crimes have him walking around free, his "debt paid". You'd know better that the Courts though, of course.)

My mate is an Aboriginal elder who had never seen the Centre, so he took off and had an extended look earlier this year. Without prompting him, he spoke at length when he returned about how depressed and depressing and clearly dangerous the place was around and in Yuendumu. Surely, we have no idea. I'd love to see Liam Jurrah resurrect his career. If he did, please let it be not against us, and please let it be with us! So he's got problems, he didn't make the choices we reckon we would've. Quite apart from the extraordinary problems of the background he couldn't fully leave, he is also clearly a man with quite extraordinary talent inside him. Talent doesn't conform, often. Beethoven, van Gogh, Leonardo, Mozart, Chopin, Cellini, Picasso, Dylan Thomas, Einstein, Socrates, etc etc etc were all to us weird blokes one way and another, and all certainly made some very peculiar choices. I don't like thugs, but they have their place in a team. I like intelligence, but Ablett was pretty impressive as a footballer. Polly Farmer and Tiger Crosswell and Jeff Farmer etc etc etc had issues. Conclusion: a bit of variety in people doesn't have to be a problem, if you have the management ability to harness it all. In an homogenised and bland club, or one reeling from its own incompetence, you'd run from the thought of another try with Jurrah; but I trust the management team we now have. I think to so authoritatively condemn the prospect of Jurrah possibly returning to AFL is a sad and dumb response to what for-all-we-on-here-would-know could be a real opportunity for something exceptional. I think narrow-mindedness and lack of imagination/trust (or maybe shell-shock, from disasters unrelated to Liam Jurrah) is colouring some posters' thoughts on the distant glimmer of a possible Jurrah return. Sit tight I say, watch and see - Melbourne-supporting is in new territory, the club is in wiser hands...