robbiefrom13

I love that this gets a "like" from Bing.

wyl, it is always a pleasure to read your stuff. you pipe up relentlessly, with impassioned views and quickfire responses, it is invigorating to read you. Go demons, with such supporters on the job! no, I don't want us to fold. Quite the opposite. I just asked whether we thought the AFL might be starting to wonder how long their PR department can stomach tidying up after us. Whether the smell of failure might be getting a bit strong. My fear is that it is, and that we may be running out of chances. I'm interested to know how come you are now not contemplating possible extinction - I thought that had been on your mind quite a bit. I imagine the AFL would act decisively if they got to the point of feeling we were terminal. So I agree totally with your last point - go outside the blue-rinse oldboys, and do what we have to to get runs on the board, fast and without any backward steps. Wipe aside anyone who wants to say "yes, but it'll take years..." - it's time for people who CAN. I wonder if there's a clock already begun ticking somewhere in the AFL. Manned by the accountants.

yes - and do we suppose the AFL will have thought about a Plan B of how they react if we stuff up this hand-out? A rational and business-minded Plan B, in which they strengthen the league by means of accepting that we simply are not a viable club? That must come into their thinking eventually.

some of the fans are still supporting his choices...

Jurrah has been spoken about surely enough - but I have to say, of course I don't defend his actions in hitting women, but I do defend the man. Jurrah's crimes were not the man's only actions. He got into a very bad place, and did indefensible actions. How he got into that bad place is grounds for defending the man (though not his actions once he got there), plus there was unquestionably another side to him as well; and despite all his faults, I would and do defend him. He was a dignified man when he came to MFC, and the enormity of his adjustment issues plus his efforts on the field were such that he deserved every bit of our admiration. He was an imaginative and supremely skilled athlete, and no amount of crime takes that away from him. I admire him for all that was good in him, and I have no doubt it was an integral part of who he was/is. There is no reason to assume that the Liam Jurrah we knew no longer exists, albeit buried in a fog of confusion and anger and who-knows-what - but if the clear-minded athlete could ever be reclaimed I for one would see it as a triumph, and I would love to see it. Sad is the right word, but I choose to believe and hope. Melbourne supporter, right? (except that I don't hold back judgment against Mark Neeld... Am I contradicting myself? Mark, just show us something...we need that alternative story!)

Almost thirty years ago it became a given in education that the teacher must find the way to successfully educate every student who comes into their class. This was not a welcome message for a lot of teachers, who felt entitled to have only the "best" classes, and only the "best" students in those classes. Has anybody ever been in a class where the teacher really only aimed at the "top" students? Or who bullied the ones who were not already succeeding? Ever experienced a teacher who used sarcasm and belittling? If you are only any good with students who barely need a teacher, you are no teacher. I'm interested to see what a coach who is good with young players struggling for confidence can do with our players. There are such coaches. I hope we get one of them. That's my hope.

do anything else in your day do you?

"with scorn... derisive laughter, etc." [demolishing more cretins in his mirth] salaam, grovel in admiration/amazement - he is so MASTERFUL!!

yep, wow, that'd fix em up then. I can imagine how they feel... "The mature Satyriconhome looks back with rightful superiority".

the fire's going out. scatter the embers, and it won't catch again. maybe a new fire in the place where the old one used to be? or not. maybe some of the last embers be taken somewhere else, to be built into another fire? though we do keep hoping don't we? I got so excited at quarter time, I was actually upset at the 10-minute mark of the second quarter. complained about the umpires for a few minutes. But how many times will I go through that before cynicism and pain dulls me altogether? eventually the detaching will happen.... I remember Fitzroy dying. We all knew it, long before it finally happened - everyone can recognise the terminal stage, even if some won't admit it. Are we getting close to that now? How soon will expectation of the end start getting said out loud about MFC? To Bing and Jumbo and the boys, the Board, Neeld, et al - followers of sport do not see routine slaughter as sport; this is pretty much off the scale. There must be a very finite amount more of this that can be endured without passing the point of no return.

out of interest, Bing, is there any circumstance in which you would say Neeld had failed, and should be moved on?

Securing our players is the more important consideration: the incoming coach should have the best chance we can give him. Changing the coach isn't exactly "radical extremism". It's just setting the election date. There may be reasons to set it earlier rather than going full term.

maybe if the AFL gave us a 15 goal start each week we'd get to see what you mean

One thing's for sure, it would clear up that question of what MFC stands for. !! Then again maybe we could merge with GWS. Some satisfaction there - we could drop Scully to Casey. (Gallows humour time.) In the end, the historians will identify the last moment when it could all have been saved, and the straw that did break the camel's back. Here we are, ready to enthusiastically embrace Jeff Kennett. Desperate, rattled, with no shame left. But, if we hold no other cards, I suppose to stay in the game we have to play this one... or can we afford to still just "hold the line" and go on as we are? Monday night, how many of us will be reeling, exhausted, ready to give in to Jeff's offer? What worries me is whether there will be anything original left when we somehow get a team in our colours viable again.

the Satyr is B - O - R - I - N - G. A couple admire him, it's true, but if this was one of those TV shows we'd overwhelmingly vote him off. How would it be to know that who you are is, you are Demonland's answer to Demonology's Dr Who? Tell us all you love that, it's so clever, you have us all in thrall... Poor bugger

Oh dear

He hasn't opened his mouth yet, other than to say he supports Melbourne, and you are at his throat with this "guessing"! Can I say no, I don't let you guess? If he's a pity supporter, what are you? A cannibal supporter? A contempt supporter? I've missed something here. You apparently would be happier not to have someone choose to support Melbourne. Like the closed club, is that your point?

I reckon that's pretty right - except that what I barrack for is not a governance entity, but a footy team that runs out on the weekend to play footy. I think we have to prioritise that during the season. Tidy up/rebuild the club and the list during the off-season - but at the moment, the reality of MFC is pre-eminently its failure to be competitive on the field. I think that during the last pre-season, the Board were either sitting on their incompetent hands or else misled by Neeld (or the CEO) about how the team would perform. The changes you propose are changes we needed bedded down before the business of palying games began. Fancy the club being such a mess at this stage that Jackson cannot tell what is what, and where the real problem is! No doubt many supporters are unimpressed by the organisational shambles of the club, and in time getting that right will bring about overall improvements. But surely what is really upsetting right now is what happens week in week out on the field. We don't really have time to work carefully through the slow process of fixing the administrative problems while the team goes on getting slaughtered. What I'm saying is, your diagnosis and proposed treatment is likely great, except that the patient is rapidly losing blood: it's time to hit the code red button, get Emergency in, and administer First Aid. Our on-field crisis demands attention, now. Well, I am calling it a crisis, as I think others are too. If I wasn't, I'd agree entirely with you.

Unity is so important, but it can also be over-rated. There are times when unity is out of its depth. When the reality fractures, you have to get a bigger umbrella, a bigger unity to get it all back on the same page... The enormity of our losses, week after week, is a fact that invalidates any unity we strive for, in that it separates methods from purpose. We cannot agree to method when it so fails to deliver our agreed purpose. Or, alternatively, we cannot continue to be agreed about our purpose when the agreed method fails to delivers an assumed purpose... So we fracture, in both directions. Neeld apologists stand firm on method, Neeld despairers won't budge on the scoreboard (our purpose is winning). We are fractured, because we are getting slaughtered. There is no rational unity at the moment - both sides are legitimate, and until Neeld unites method with purpose we must inevitably remain fractured. If not Neeld, then someone else under whom unity of method and purpose can be achieved. That may be a bigger umbrella than Neeld. Arguing for time is to argue for Neeld, and the price is monumental disunity on the grounds of monumental failure to align method with purpose. The ongoing fracturing will almost certainly result in more and more bits of the club breaking off. Already, the level of intolerance arising out of strong allegiance to either method or purpose, and out of differing views of what our method or our purpose should be, and out of sheer confusion because of the sundering of method from purpose, is impacting supporters and attendance figures; what it is doing to players is anybody's guess (though their performance must be some kind of a clue). As an aside, we were divided on the issue of tanking, at the time. Some could not swallow strategic losing. This was the same divide we now face. The culture of the club is still poisoned by the theory that losing can be good for us. Both sides of the Neeld debate actually have put this cancerous thought forward. We really do need a bigger narrative.

you could look at that as selling extra tickets for the Titanic. Or playing in the band as the ship goes down. The elephant in the room for some is the ship actually sinking... From the Ox's point of view, he is surely alerting us to what he sees as an impending disaster. You may or may not agree with him on this, but surely his motives are clear enough, and his good intentions above question. How can it be fair to criticise him when there is so much evidence suggesting that the ship is in danger? We are certainly not making good passage through the season, right? We are certainly taking on debt at an alarming rate, aren't we? The Board is not actually doing anything yet, is it? Maybe they will later, maybe we'll play better later, maybe attendances will rise and the cash will begin to pour in - but just at the moment the Ox says "I see icebergs!" and reaches for the whistle. And the Neeld apologists find fault with his timing, his discretion, his past, his whatever. It's the Emperor's new clothes...

There are posters on here who clearly believe putting down the players is the way to help....

Schwab loved the glory and the theory, didn't seem aware that the players are the reality. Seems to have left a stain of his thinking. I speculate about how much of this emphasis Schwab invented, and how much he acquired it from those he wanted to be ranked amongst. Maybe just like-minded, all of them dreaming. Understood money and PR, but, at the very least, he embodied and catalysed the cancer at the root of our problems.

Cam Schwab briefed him perhaps?

um... would it be a fact that the rest of the world is out there, jazza? or, which part of "fact" do you understand?

Maybe Jackson will address these functions in a way that makes roles clearer. Certainly, I think our players (and supporters) would benefit if the club installed a coach who performed the traditional role of a coach.