robbiefrom13

The MFC certainly do need to get out of this mess, but it isn't necessarily terminal for the club whatever happens. If it doesn't just all blow over, in the worst case scenario there will be blame laid against certain culprits, and the MFC may perhaps for a year or two or three not be able to add more young players to their young list. Any identified culprits either already are or else very soon would be no longer employed at the MFC. I reckon we'd probably survive such a punishment, building a strong culture with our backs to the wall, out of our already talented list, and with excellent coaching/development staff; and if we did survive such punishment, at the end of the punishment the odium of having done wrong would be over. It's not as though we gained any advantage from our sins... The AFL also needs to get out of this mess - but unlike the clearly known pain ahead for a punished MFC, there can be no measurement of the pain to come for the AFL: if they can't make it all blow over they will find extricating themselves to be far more complicated - and damaging - than it would be for the MFC. In the worst case scenario the AFL would hand down an adverse finding against the MFC, only to immediately lose all further control of what could then become a very protracted and expanding nightmare. They have already been alerted to the likelihood of the MFC defending themselves in the Supreme Court, and once the matter moves into the Court it is out of the AFL's control. Both the Court and the media would then own what happens next. If the AFL were to win against the MFC in the Supreme Court, it is likely the win would be at the price of sections of the media demanding other clubs be also investigated and punished. Plus the Supreme Court would have given a clear statement about its reasoning, thus defining what constitutes transgression on the rule. The MFC would very likely be depicted in the media as a martyr to tyrannical and arbitrary league management that was firstly unable to frame its rules clearly enough and then for years brushed aside public discussion of the problems created by those rules, only to finally (in response to media pressure form clearly agenda-driven commentators) crash down punitively on one struggling easy-target club. This would inevitably be seen as a justice issue, and it goes to the heart of the governance of the AFL - it is a story that would be likely to gather a lot of support for the bullied underdog MFC. Could the AFL afford to brazen it out, "above the law" and suddenly impervious again to media pressure? - and retain "good repute"? For as long as the AFL management issue continued in the public eye, "the integrity of the game" would continue to be eroded by issues such as a) one team after another being identified as having not been trying, B) poor administration and governance of the rules and the competition generally, c) Demetriou's personal backflips and exposed inconsistencies; and the back page leads would feast on muck-raking over the past alongside the ongoing critique of the AFL management generally and Demetriou in particular for carrying out their responsibility so poorly, bringing down the League's reputation. Fans would be seriously disillusioned, and you could imagine there would be some home truths spelled out from the bench. In other words, the MFC may be in the mire at the moment, but nothing compared to where the AFL is. They are at risk of more damage than the MFC, all because - this must be the key point in the whole mess - under Anderson's leadership, Brock McLean and Caroline Wilson were allowed to set the AFL's agenda. Anderson's gone, thank goodness. It now has to be damage control for the AFL. As a natter of urgency, the AFL must find a way to credibly cancel their endorsement of McLean's and Wilson's agendas. The AFL needs to clarify their rules, and close ranks with maximum gravitas. Is there a way to sell the belief that no cat did get out of the bag? That's the AFL's real need now. They may have their faults, but everyone loses if the AFL loses control over its affairs.

Body was broken - only just held together with pain-killers. He said he wanted to have some life left after football. And as good as he still was, he was not even close to what he had been in his prime.

Supposing we do see improvement overall, I want to see Watts emerge as a gamebreaker. More than anyone else, he's been the target of the sneerers; and so, for us to begin to really command respect, I think that Watts' performances just about have to demand respect first. Unfair, but he's been front and centre since we drafted him. I suspect he'll either be at the centre of our rise or he'll just drift out the side; but if he takes off, we shake off all the crap we've taken in the past so-many years... Against GWS at the MCG, Watts fending off to gather on the wing and taking a couple of bounces before the perfect cross to Trengove at centre-half-forward, who marked over Scully before goaling - that was a pointed statement about being number one draft pick if ever I saw one, and it got me very excited. I think he's ready for a break-out, and goodness knows he's got the skills if he can impose himself on the game week after week. I want more of this - rub all their faces in it, Jack! It would silence the critics and vindicate the club better than just about anything - providing of course that we are seen to have begun our push up the ladder.

1. Melbourne could never get Flower playing on Grieg - Greig would change sides as soon as Robbie came over to his wing. Make of that what you like, but I know what the outer always said when it happened. 2. As a kid, Robbie often had to be a one-man team against his brother and the neighbour: "When I got kick, I had to make sure it went high enough to give me time to run down the yard and mark it again. Looking back on it, I think that was great training for developing ball-handling skills." ( - Robbie, page 68.)

What the film footage (as wonderful as it is) cannot convey is the whole-ground impact he had. When he got the ball, or was moving to where he would get it, even as the roar went up your eyes would leap 80 metres down the ground. You didn't want to miss a thing he did, but no way would you get any sense of it if you just watched him. Forwards (Biffin especially) would take off, defenders must've felt panic, everyone changed gear in the instant and the whole game would split open. To see this stuff is what TV cannot give you, and it is the best. Cameras follow the player with the ball, but the really great players instantly impact half the ground when they take possession - and while everything suddenly moves faster, at the same time they seem to have all the time in the world. Diesel Williams was slow and rooted to the spot in the centre, but he opened the game dramatically with his lightning-fast and creative handballing. The original "distributor" of the ball (as far as I ever saw) was Polly Farmer - he fired the ball out by hand to runners 15 metres away and cut the game open every time. But Robbie was without question the most spectacular I ever saw in his capacity to regularly make 80 metre moves - and he did it with such lightness and pace. As extraordinary as anything about him was the degree of improbability of him as a footballer. To look at him or listen to him speak, he was so mild and inoffensive and slight, you just could not imagine him out there with the tough guys. He was the ultimate proof that our game is more than just numbers - it has at its very pinnacle players who defy all the rules and use imagination, vision, desire and almost certainly a sixth sense to transcend the great struggle. It is its ability to showcase such rare, almost mystical capability that for me makes football the greatest sport I know. Beyond the slog and the drills and the set-plays, the gym work and the game-plans and all that stuff lies a zone that is pure art - it is both poetic in its slowing/intensifying of time, and breathtaking - the world of Daicos and Ablett Snr and unlikeliest-looking of the lot, Robbie Flower. Jack Dyer once commented that Robbie Flower knew by instinct exactly where everything around him was, even what was behind him; he said this capacity had been identified in gridiron players, where it was reckoned there might be half a dozen players at the most who has any sense of it - and watching Robbie Flower, Jack Dyer realised what it was the Americans had been telling him. Tiger Crosswell once said that if you ever beat Robbie Flower you might as well hang up your boots - there would be nothing left to achieve in football. To watch him play - nothing has ever compared. Now and then you see something that reminds you a little of it...

you are calling this "more generous"? Mindboggling...

"I'm not sure how prank calls are evidence of society's degeneration though", says Choke. interesting point. Sidestepping with "just joking" is I think a bit like lying - you end up with no fixed points anywhere, no solid starting points for any serious thought. And society surely will degenerate if it abandons serious thought. When nothing is more than material for mockery and stupidity, and casualties are just bad luck, it's hard to see how anything serious can become the norm. Think of that comment the young Jack Watts made about losing, and how it took the wind out of our sails; serious damage it did to his reputation, at the time. The "golden age of Athens" in the 5th Century BC came to an end at the same time as they stopped seriously questioning their public life. For almost a century the city had stopped for three days every year while the Drama Festival was held. Four plays a day, exploring the big issues of the day - three tragedies and one outrageous comedy. High point of all western civilisation, that 50 years in Athens in the middle of the 5th Century. When the city lost its taste for seriously examining what was going on it began to make bad mistakes, and in very short order ended the great flowering that had brought us democracy and many of the greatest achievements ever in architecture, literature, philosophy, science and so on. As the city rapidly declined, the drama festival was continued, but only with re-runs. Socrates went on questioning things, but he got arrested for it and was made to drink poison. Athens as history reveres it was finished. Seriousness ensures there is life in society. Mindlessness takes up time and space, and you have to wonder if for just that reason it is far more costly than it appears to be. We can't afford to not be on our game. If you don't have a clear line around where the fun is, and retain proper respect for the important things that deserve our respect and deference, so that there is no doubt about their priority, then it has to be the slippery slope. With the radio prank and the variety of people's comments about it, we seem to have no bearings. Will we as a society ask the serious questions, and interrogate ourselves for what is revealed about our public life here? Athens at its peak most certainly would have. I am like dee-luded I suspect - I have lived for a while to end up persuaded that the "old-fashioned" values are actually important; and I'd go so far as to say replacing them with smartarsery is a fundamental axe at the root of civilisation. So there is my take on how shrugging about prank calls can be evidence of a culture on the way down... (Down, because we used to be and still could be higher.)

Choke might be right - I am seizing my opportunity here, to attack something I hate. I am making use of a suicide that may have had all sorts of complicated causes. Where I am coming from is what dee-luded referred to - the School Yard. As a school-teacher, I can't stand seeing weak kids slavishly follow mindless models that are feted on radio and tv, etc, and growing up habituated to anti-social and selfishly unproductive patterns of behaviour. And I hate seeing the collateral victims of loud self-serving bullies getting hurt. I believe that we have always had those hard-hearted or very stupid and ambitious individuals who seize on their opportunities to boost themselves by taking others down. Shakespeare railed against gongoozling idiots - the sort who stand and drink and stare and mock. Part of history, and we now see new sorts of hurt being inflicted through the unregulated power of media/celebrity/communications technology. Somewhere along the line, we will call a stop. Usually too late. The thing about the slave trade, or the sale of cigarettes, is that at the time no-one thought anything of it at all - slaves just were inferior, and they benefitted from us taking their lives in hand and so on. Think stolen generations - done for their own good as much as anything. Cigarettes were good for your nerves! In the pot, the frog would tell you if asked, "no, this is not too bad. Well, I'm actually enjoying it..."

The great Britain believed slavery was ok until well into the 1800's; the Americans tore themselves apart over their right to have slaves, in the second half of the 19th Century. Pre-pubescent girls down mines with naked miners who molested them was known about and tolerated in the 1840's in England. I could go on. Cars were around for years before we introduced driving licences. Cigarettes used to be allowed everywhere, and when I was in primary school I used to be able to go to the milk bar to buy them for my father. Laws eventually change, when we realise they need to. Lots of things today need to be legislated against - wife-bashing, racial and religious vilification, association with extremist groups espousing everything from white supremacy to jihad. Watering the lawn when there's a drought. People don't always choose the sensible and tolerant path - often, they do whatever they see as an opportunity for some personal benefit. It's a shame, but where the means of doing damage exist, regulation seems to end up being considered necessary. If only people were mature enough and had sufficient sense of connectedness to humanity generally for us not to need such regulation... But people who have no shame and obsessively thrust themselves forward for personal notoriety or fame do need to be somehow stopped from wasting the time and efforts of others who are doing communally useful things. As I said before, hoax calls to police rescue services are no longer seen as just good fun and innocent. Hospitals ought to be exempt from self-serving smartarsery. We can - probably in time will - come up with suitable controls and disincentives to reduce the amount of time-wasting and distress caused by disconnected people with no worthwhile reason for getting into in-trays that matter in a community-wide sense. I am all for individual self-expression, but not for mocking/tearing-down reasons; we all have gifts, but I don't consider smartarsery to be a gift. No disrespect intended, but I put this forward as a perspective...

One other possibility is that the AFL will ultimately make its decision not so much in terms of what MFC did that brought the game into disrepute (clearly there was no rule that the MFC broke), but rather in terms of what McLean and Wilson were able to do bringing the game into disrepute. Thorny problem, but now is when the AFL needs to have some response to THAT, in defence of the AFL brand. However one views the behaviour of MFC several years ago, the behaviour of McLean and Wilson and other bandwaggoners in the past six months has been genuinely damaging to the AFL as well as to one of its licence-holders, and it is currently a very live issue. It has become a major news item about the AFL's competition and its integrity, and the AFL brand has surely been hurt. When the AFL determines that the tanking allegations were without substance, the AFL may want to address its vulnerability to what has actually been extended and destructive collateral damage sustained while individuals associated with the AFL pursued in public their own agendas.

I think it was a couple of giggly infants who dreamed it up (hate the word "stunt" - anything that can be called a stunt: don't do it!) and thought they'd been clever and ran to management to tell them. Management apparently operate on the same breathless mental plane too - they knew no better - all were surely focused on the gaspworthy daring of the stunt; and surely no lawyer could fail to see the potential outcry, regardless of any question of a suicide. But they in their own coccoon of mindlessness oh boy they just went ahead! The way the radio station and the two clowns have reacted since, it confirms the mindless self-absorption in my opinion. No-one has applied any mature or responsible thought at all - look at how they glowed with self-admiration and look-at-meing straight afterwards and around the going-to-air. Sooo excited! No planning - not what they'd think of, I don't reckon. A licence ought to requre a test and passing that test and continuing to have some awareness of some rules. Is this part of the as-yet unregulated information/communications revolution perhaps? The 21st century's answer to 5-year-olds down mines in the industrial revolution - self-absorbed self-indulging people with power doing it because legislation hadn't addressed it yet and they did whatever seemed right to them? People not up to the demands of moral discrimination when no-one is telling them exactly what you can and shouldn't do? Time for legislation...

and another bit of info - Southern Cross Austereo spokeswoman Sandy Kaye now says Christian and Greig are being counselled by a psychologist – paid for by the company – and Christian and Grieg are "being babysat" by Austereo staff in order to be "kept from seeing the media coverage as much as possible ... We're seriously concerned about their welfare and we’re doing whatever we can to help them." The radio station says nobody could have anticipated the tragic outcome of the "prank" - as though that is an argument to be putting up now! Everything in the response from the radio station and the presenters screams immaturity and ignorance. Babies on the loose - like allowing an infant to play with a loaded gun - giving such people the technology with which to impose on the busy real world their self-absorbed stupidity. Come to think of it, on the technology that they were not fit to have access to, being on the radio may well have driven them to try to think of something clever to say or do, and may have puffed them up to imagine the wave of admiration they could get for their smartarsery, but it was with the phone that they did their damage... How do we protect ourselves and the rest of the world from fools who can't see what just shouldn't be done with a phone? Maybe these two should be charged in the way that "pranksters" pay for wasted police rescue efforts following mindless (and self-absorbed) "hoax calls", or in the way that arsonists pay for the damage they cause by their use of a packet of matches. Their immaturity and ignorance surely can't be an excuse. Why do Australians listen to such drivellers on the radio, and why do advertisers not shut them down? Seriously depressing that our community indulges these pathetic fools, a point which is not lost on the rest of the world.

smartarse is not funny. hospitals are not fair game. hospitals do important life-and-death stuff, while smartarses contribute nothing but a dumbing-down consumerist attitude to other people and stuff that matters. funny is funny and I like it, but there are a lot of very unfunny "comedians" who can only push abuse, denigration and mindlessness mockery - the "humour" of cruelty - that has a lot in common with bullying - it tears down the innocent, and makes a public spectacle of others' discomfort, etc. I am inclined to think it is motivated by the desire to highlight how someone else is even dumber than they are themself. Why on earth would our culture see merit in giving such people a public platform from which to mould the attitudes and sense of humour of others?

Demetriou's starting position is that there was no tanking. The AFL can't afford for there to have been any tanking. The investigation has to take a long time because what they are trying to establish absolutely is that there is no evidence that tanking happened. And, importantly, being seen to have established the lack of any evidence. That will close the file, after which you can bet there will be some clearly worded advice to players who imagine themselves achieving media fame at the expense of the AFL's repute. If there was smoke coming out of a barrel anywhere, the fact would surely have been leaked by now.

This seems to be a very strange response to what Bossdog had posted. I re-read his "credentials", and can't see what point you are trying to make. What exactly deserved your derision there? Besides, it really is a fair point to make, saying that we don't know what the player is contending with. I'd add that mental and emotional difficulties are just as real as physical ones. I imagine that the backing-down some of us went through when we found out what Bartram had been struggling with would be a pretty common backing-down if only we knew all the facts about all our players all the time. Sounds to me like Bossdog has spent enough time close to players to know how ill-informed the "expert" keyboard commentary often is. I like what he said. Although I do notice that some supporters are more understanding of the legitimacy of some difficulties than others. This is perhaps a bit like someone today denying the reality of depression - it seems to me a type of thinking that has passed its use-by-date. Minds vary just as much as physiques do, and all kinds of physiques have been adapted to make useful contributions in footy; they can't all do everything, but they can play roles where their limitations barely matter and their excellences help win us games. So too with varying mental and emotional types, surely. There must be cut-off points, of course - but how would we know enough to say where the lines should be drawn?

Redleg is so disillusioned as to contemplate giving football away. Here's a suggestion: give Demonland away. Fair dinkum, it is more depressing than the football. Firstly Olisik bags out the impassioned and upset Grand New Flag, rubbishing him for his spelling errors. Olisik goes on to then omit both his own apostrophes. We just sit through this, reading it all. Olisik implies if not actually says that Grand New Flag's posts are trash. And we all read it, giving space in our frustrated and disappointed MFC memory to one poster describing another's post as trash while he commits the same errors that he bags the other out for. This crap is worse than sitting through the footy. Secondly, Olisik claims that Grand New Flag's examples do not help his case, and asks "how did Jurrah go backwards under Neeld?" Well, it surely cannot be disputed that Jurrah went backwards this year, or that quite a few others did too. There is widely expressed concern that Neeld has not been at all inclined to show either sensitivity or flexibility in his handling of Jurrah or a number of others; does Grand New Flag have to spell out the supposed connection between Neeld's narrow approach to coaching and the underperformance of Jurrah (among others), to avoid being trashed by the likes of Olisik? How can Olisik pretend to be unaware of the supposed connection between Neeld's coaching style and the lacklustre, unenthusiastic and un-instinctive play of so many at Melbourne this year? Why do we sit through such pretend arguing? Olisik could have chosen to argue that Jurrah's going backwards is not attributable to Neeld, and obviously could have made a case for this, or he may have chosen to argue that not cutting any slack to the Jurrah's of the club is a good thing regardless of the consequences - but he didn't. That would have been interesting - obviously, Neeld is stirring up all sorts of people, and there will be a cost associated with bringing in the changes that he has in mind. Different people will have different views about whether the balance is right or not. I would be interested to hear the different points of view properly set out. I know what I feel about it, but I come onto Demonland in the hope of seeing a range of opinions. Many of us were upset when Travis Johnstone was let go - we needed to hear other points of view before we got what we ended up believing was a balanced understanding of the whole thing. Supporters like that kind of discussion, we like to find out... But Olisik did not engage in debate - he just bagged out Grand New Flag, with schoolteacherly nitpicking and "tis not" argument. (Olisik, if you can't debate, don't make a fool of yourself strutting yourself like this! And me - get smart: if you are too frustrated by the people posting here, don't read it!) What can we make of Olisik's "thirdly"? He does what he bagged Grand New Flag for doing, calls him a troll for raising his concerns in what looked to me like a sincere and reasoned expression of real opinions, accuses him of repeating himself (!!!), and hints that perhaps Olisik (unlike Grand New Flag) knows what goes on inside the club. I want to know who is the "well-known players (sic) manager" that Grand New Flag cites - that's a question worth asking, and Demonland appears to have a "put up or shut up" attitude to posters citing unnamed authorities. Perhaps someone might apply this rule to Olisik's last statement - tell us, Olisik, or shuttup trying to look like you have inside information and contacts that you don't have. But, having read Grand New Flag's post, I think the question should at least be asked of him - what manager? what players? If there is substance in this allegation, it would surely strengthen Demon supporters' concerns about the coach. If the coach is making catastrophic mistakes, a supporters' site like this one could well be the forum on which a groundswell of members' angst would build until it put pressure on the club - and if that is needed, then presumably it would be a good thing. But instead of rational analysis and discussion, we get this posturing abusive ignorance... There are a number of regular loudmouths on Demonland who leap to the attack, taking over threads, with all the conviction of the proven authority on whatever subject is being discussed. They tolerate no opinions other than their own. They do not appear to value their fellow Melbourne supporters unless those fellow Melbourne supporters agree with them. And ... I hesitate to say this, but it does appear to be true ... these opinionated and adamant-on-every-subject merchants all love Neeld.. See you later, gang. Without Demonland, I just might saddle up again next year.

Wandered into the bar and heard the conversation, thought I could offer an opinion and found out that I was not as likeminded as you'd need to be to join in. My mistake. Look like a moron, because for me there are things more important than winning, and more important even than football. Wrong thing to say, wrong place to say it.

no I didn't - but it was known that Neeld and Brad had been having weekly talks for some time. I think we'd been told that the possible retirement was on the agenda.

troll, you say?

you have some interesting theories! You are of course unqualified to say, in the way I imagine you'd consider me qualified, me probably being one of those you refer to? I'm here to tell you that, no, you have not get the understanding of this... Not even deep down. names-calling, ranger...

yes - true for you, Malthouse cleaned out his list, lots do. Maybe that is the unspoken context for the comment of his I quoted, but on the surface of it, what Malthouse said was that he coaches to the strengths of the players, and he endorses another bloke as a coach because he too approaches coaching that way. Whether or not Malthouse would advocate as a policy cleaning out your list is not stated here; and whether or not he would see the cleaning out of the list at Melbourne as a good thing is obviously nothing to do with what he was commenting on, and not what he said. I was interested in what he did say. I think I agree with you - Neeld should get his fair chance at doing the job. He has a contract for 3 years and I do not suggest he be discarded any more than I would suggest wholesale discarding of players. Work with what you have, within reason, is my starting point, and as far as possible try to make it better. Obviously, add more talent as you can, but I'd put the focus more on additions rather than deletions, and sometimes it seems to me that there are supporters whose first thought is their long and vengeful list of who to get rid of... In my post, I was just thinking about how it's all been going, and suggesting that a comment that Malthouse did make might have some relevance. Your response to my post misses the point that I made, and disregards the comment that Malthouse did make. You may be entirely right in your conclusions; like you I will be waiting with interest to find out. Compiling a manual on those things that make coaching successful would be a good thing, I think, of wide interest, and any contemporary such manual would presumably include the thoughts of Malthouse on the subject - wouldn't you agree? I concede that the quote that caught my eye may not make the cut, if his views were sampled more widely... Thankyou. I'll try to avoid those TV shows others watch. Newspapers, too? And negative thoughts expressed on Demonland?... (Was your reply to my post a negative comment?)

why would Neeld talk about how necessary "games played" is, at the same time as he is planning to have Green retire? Do you think that if Neeld had put this argument to Brad, he would have gone ahead and retired for the good of the team? bit of a smokescreen, too to be saying at that time how Watts could become a Goddard.. ok, you're all sick of this - me too, but it doesn't smell good

No messiah, at this stage, surely - that would be evidenced by results. But the question that can be answered at this stage is about his style or his methods. We can be forming an opinion about that now - and watching to see the outcomes in 2013, which will show the worth of his style and methods. There are already some things clear about his methods, and some things that may not be entirely clear yet but which must be worth discussing. He wants contested footy, played around the edges of the oval rather than the middle, and he apparently isn't interested in a player's forward work until he first sees their defensive work. He favours strong bodies and toughness. He has an authoritarian style, using the word "compliance" quite a bit early in his appointment. He is not protective of his players, stating publicly that players not measuring up to his requirements would not be playing (fair enough view, but I wonder at his stating it publicly - what was he intending by that?), publicly criticising individuals (including some pretty young players), he had the final say in a process that stripped long-serving players of their leadership roles, and more recently he has publicly spoken about a big clean-out at the end of the year. In the "not entirely clear yet" category, I would put the "retirement" of Brad Green (jumped or pushed?), the non-selection of Cook, and his attempts to re-design Jurrah, Moloney, Morton, Magner, Trengove, and maybe others - to be balanced with his success with Jones, Watts, etc. As to whether he is overall effective in this aspect of his player development, it's not clear yet, but it certainly seems that he is pursuing his agenda of getting players to play the game his way or else. On the evidence of those close to him, we continue to hear players referring to the need for players to buy into Neeldy's approach - which can only mean that this remains an incomplete process. While we all wait for that to be accomplished, we go on losing... Is the guy a good salesman for his plan? Is it a good plan? Are we looking at a playing group still not on the same page as the coach after almost a year? If so, "why?" is a real question to be asking - and pace RangeRover et al, the answer is not self-evident. Either coach, or players, or a combination of the two, could be the cause of the non-emergence of unity here: coach could be a poor explainer so that he can't be understood, he could be unrealistic in his demands, the players could be recalcitrant, they could be needing help to adapt and not getting it, there could be other issues overshadowing their response to the coach (McClean suggested this), or there just may not be good chemistry so that try as they might, neither side is confident of the other. A footy club is not necessarily going to improve when restructured onto a military model, with a bullying drill sergeant there to crush out individuality and instil mindless obedience. That approach may cost the footy club some of its real capital. Malthouse speaking about coaching in relation to Wallace and Port Adelaide refers to players having strengths, and the coach playing to those strengths. The players' strengths are surely diverse; some of our players have creative and unclassifiable strengths (e.g. Jurrah), and perhaps there would be a really serious down-side to devaluing those strengths if we were to be applying a one-size-fits-all approach... I worked for a number of years at a place that got in a new boss. The new guy came in with "new broom" policies, made big statements, and then began his micro-management - he moved all our desks to where he thought they should be, next to who he wanted us to sit next to, and so on. Lots of new rules, no regard for what existed. We were all told to take all our stuff home, and he got rid of the filing cabinets. Very quickly the experienced staff all got out. Gratified, I suspect, he imported young staff who complied gladly. The place has gone downhill. So, I am watching with real concern. If Neeld's methods cost us what I value in creativity and skill, and replace it with compliance and football-by-numbers, in an atmosphere of authoritarian bullying, I will be disappointed. Not even sure I'd be that excited over a flag even, if Jurrah and Watts and Green and so on had all been discarded as not quite what Neeld wanted. I still remember the idiocy of sending Robbie Flower into the weights room over summer, to try and make him something other than what he was. But I'll wait and see what outcomes Neeld gets, by the end of 2013. See how he modifies his approach as he gets to know the list - which he said early on he would do. Hope to see that I am wrong in those thoughts I have about worrying trends in his coaching style. If he doesn't prove successful, I hope he won't have done irreparable damage with his as yet unproven methods; even more though, I hope by his success I am proven wrong in my worrying about his style and methods.

we could back-and-forth on this forever - I say Malthouse was making a general comment on what he thinks is good coaching practice. I applied it to Neeld because he is a coach, and it seems to me that his practice appears to be very different to what Malthouse has referred to as good practice. In particular, I had in mind the idea expressed by quite a lot of Melbourne supporters that Neeld perhaps is focused on implementing his own style ("conformity" being his early catchword) at the expense of the players' own instincts (or as Malthouse says, their strengths). Plenty of examples of concern about that, on Demonland. (I can't help thinking about this; and why did Brad Green go on so much in his presser about the need for all the players to buy in?...) I want to ask the question, you don't want it discussed. Fair enough - two points of view. I guess I'll drop it - no support for my question has shown up.... I thought Brad Green was a great player for us. Great bloke too, my son told me, and I thought in his character he was a very solid example to the other guys. And Tasmanian. I'm very sorry to see him go.

What I would do is I'd take it on, with interest. And no, I don't see that "it doesn't actually matter what Malthouse thinks". In the context of a discussion board, I raise the comments of Malthouse because he is an authority I respect - I think he is entitled to be considered a thoughtful and well-informed authority - and it did seem to me that what he said about Wallace had some relevance to some aspects of Neeld's strategies and style that I am unconvinced by, and possibly some relevance to the announcement of Green's retirement. I'm interested in what's going on at Melbourne. Not all of it makes sense to me. I can't see why Green's experience isn't valued when Neeld wants experienced players. I can't see that Greeny is anywhere near the top of the list of NQR's at the club. I wish Green's demise didn't come in the same week as Schwabb's reappointment, not for any good reason, but there is the lingering rumour, and the timing could've been less coincidental. Maybe I'm the only person who will wonder if there's any connection between the two announcements. I'd like to know what someone informed and knowledgeable made of Green's retirement and the way it has come about. Reasonable question for a forum like this, I'd've thought.