robbiefrom13

me too. I was a passionate donkey who got upset every time. The supporters (if there had been any) could've criticised me for a lot of things, but not for having given up. But are our players really without talent? What if confidence, or some other mental state, is causing them to underperform? Bagging out their native talent (or their effort) isn't going to help... I know we are upset, but analysis of what the problem is must be better than kicking the bucket over in frustration.

The thing is, "it does not look to me" is no argument. Green says he hurts a lot, and describes it. We sit up in the grandstand and imagine what is in the players' minds. Obviously we don't know, it's not possible to know on that basis. Is Green a liar? I don't see any reason at all to think so. I strongly doubt it, on the basis of what I know of him. A lot of us psychoanalyse the players from a distance, informed by our own hurt and disappointment mostly, with no real evidence to go on; of course we do, we are passionate supporters and so on, but we should recognise that this is just pub talk. We don't know. In another thread Neeld's statements are being picked over to try and get a clear picture of his relationship with the players, his outlook and his methods. That's a lot more defensible than presumptions about what's in our players' minds where we have nothing to go on other than how they played. Too big a jump - there could be all sorts of reasons why they don't play well, and when our guesses are contradicted by the statements of the players, there's a bit of a slippery slope for us as supporters if we reject what the player says and go with the conclusions of our own disappointment.

Interesting thought. And some of us were afraid that Neeld was drifting close to bullying. On Beamer, do we have anything to go on other than lip-reading at a distance? Not wanting to speculate overly, but it did seem odd that he was overlooked for leadership... And there is the fact of his non-performance when the going is tough... You have to think there is something, somewhere, insidiously undermining the whole show for the past so many years. Do other demonlanders all feel good about Beamer's boxing camps for the kids, run more-or-less separate to the club? Is he on board, or flying solo - do we have any real evidence, those who read his twitter, or have spoken with him?

yes. neeld was a teacher - he ought to know how to make this happen. nobody ever achieves anything great in life when their outlook is defensive - creative is risk-taking, confident students find it easy, and an environment of encouragement helps a lot. why don't we run to space, to make a lead? negative state of mind maybe? the coach needs to know that the state of mind of his players is the biggest determinant of their achievements, and interact with them accordingly. remember the sydney game, 2010: the same players, but suddenly faster, stronger, accurate and flying. AFL is not the Australian army, it's a workplace where the players determine the outcome. somebody posted somewhere the truism of coaching that it is the players who make the great coach... so, build them up!

haha I'd like them to get it, and be working hard together with the coaching staff to achieve the goals they'd identified. Fine by me for the coaching staff to have put a fire under them, and so on, and to have come up with the goals, but in the end the players have to own it too. Coaches would do well to at least publicly talk up the players' ownership of the big enterprise. I dunno how you say that, but it is a different story to "comply", and "comply" does leave room for the players feeling maybe not quite included. Part of success has to be intellectual property, and I don't think it's so great when the way things are described sounds a bit like the coach is the owner of what's going on. I just think that a different way of saying some of this stuff would look better, and I hope that the authoritarian/paternalistic/threatening tone that some of us bleeding hearts fear we are hearing is not actually representative of the way the new coaches are interacting with the players. I guess 99% won't actually go for that, either, now that I look at it. But still, it's my opinion.

This strikes a chord with me. These choice-of-words things may be little things, but actually the words can skew the message. In the trenches, when it got really out-of-the-question awful, what soldiers continued for apparently was their mates. If the players know that Neeld is thinking "us", it must be easier for them to go with him when he keeps pushing them further and further outside their comfort zones. If it hurts, does the one making it happen feel any empathy, any appreciation of what they are doing? There has to be a bonding between coach and players, and language could interfere with that. At really tough training, do our players see their coach out there pushing himself too - that earns respect, and provides perspective when you think you've had enough. I appreciate that Neeld sees the need to make changes (we are grateful!), but he also needs to develop the right relationship with the players. We will want them to follow him absolutely. "Comply" worries me too, as a them-and-us word. A top-down word, implying a very strong focus on the coach's demand rather than the players' growth. A really good balance would allow for the nature of each individual, so that the Liam Jurrahs of the world would never be left wondering whether they belong... Still, Neeld says he has been focused on individual development so far, and perhaps we are reading too much into his choice of words. I hope so. Norm Smith was at times hated for his toughness, but he was loved for his personal connection with the players' lives. The Red Fox tells us that he knew them individually well enough not to have a one-size-fits-all approach.

In the TAC, Strauss was brilliant at spotting up Watts and putting it in his hands. You have to wonder why other Melbourne players can't see to do it. When we were considering drafting him from junior footy, with teammates using him as they did, I'll bet crash-and-bash never came into consideration.

not helpful. might as well say it'll all be wasted if he - or anyone else - falls under a truck tomorrow. Where does your "somehow" come from? He denies the charges, and is released on minimal bail, but you would rush to speculating on sentencing? Strange thinking for a "supporter"... Hold your nerve, and don't talk silly talk

Aboriginal life at Yuendumu is for us apparently as unimaginable as life on another planet. The allegations of an alcohol-fueled machete-wielding Liam seem to us so incongruous as to be inconceivable, nothing to do with the Liam we have known for three years. They are images from that other world, and the personal pressures/obligations under which people there live, about which we know nothing. Whatever his actual involvement there was, it certainly doesn't compute for us. The Court - with some degree of local understanding - has sent Liam back to Victoria and, for the present, tells him to stay away from that other world. Who can find fault with that? With what paternalistic ignorance would we add our judgement? So I say, we should accept him back with gratitude. On the footy field here, he will still be the extraordinarily talented and imaginative player we have marvelled at for the past three years - which may not be who he is in the Northern Territory, but it certainly is someone he wants to be. Perhaps Liam will in time process these two lives he lives, and discover some way of harmonising these two worlds he is connected to. Maybe he won't. Maybe it can't be done. What a really wonderful thing it would be if it could happen. But we should at least embrace him living here, welcoming him back to the MFC and maybe trusting that the "alternative story" of the Liam who lives in our world - one of the most extraordinary and talented and courageous people in the AFL - will in time be strengthened, and will be good for him. He is some pioneer, whatever the eventual outcome! A privilege to call him ours.

hmm. You can take the long view of this, too. Last year we under-achieved compared to our form at the end of 2010, and there were reasons for that under-achieving - key injuries, increasing paralysis of the coaching, off-field unrest, ineffective on-field leadership, Scullyoma eating away at us untreated for the whole year. Of course we fell in a heap... You can now delete virtually all of those things. Further, we have a stronger list overall and a year's more growth into the young players, plus entirely revamped off-field structures, coaching and training. Even before the season kicks off, we are clearly in a very different space from the mess of 2011. I say we will do a lot better than is obvious yet. Get ready to be surprised. Think Eagles 2011. Six out of eleven, and then look out!

picture the incredulity of all in the football world - and everyone else - if the Melbourne Football Club now chose to sack Jimmy Stynes!! Sure it's a forum, and everyone can have their say - and sure we are curious about how things happened at the time. But going from raking it over to talking as though our president should be measured against a conventional job description seems undignified and shameful. Ignorant too - if that were all he was, we may have already been extinct. Bailey's failure and the Geelong disaster are now water under the bridge, and surely things are going a lot better. Jimmy Stynes is not visibly hindering progress, surely? Isn't tearing up what he has built? The goodwill and inspiration around him is immense, of enormous value to the club. History will stand in awe of what this man has done and still is now. Ask anyone, who has not read this forum. What I agree with is, I can't wait for the footy. We may have tears up ahead, but we needn't have shame with it.

hadn'ta been for daddy...

p;oor boy you're bound to lie

looking for places to hide already...

Robbie Flower, anyone?

on the other hand, if there's any truth in it, it makes JW's unselfishness worth another thought. Real leadership? Making a point about the system?

Part of coaching is vision. The players do their stuff, but in a way they are limited by their necessary focus on the specifics. It must be for the coach to bring the wider perspective and to see what everyone hasn't seen yet. Have that big vision, and get it to happen. Hird has certainly done this at Essendon. But the community of Melbourne appears to major on the sensible negatives - "don't expect too much", excusesexcuses, handwringing and downer after downer... I remember Robbie Flower's first game - I was there upstairs on the fence in Bay 13 and watched him right below me. He ran out looking ridiculously skinny, with his elbows tucked in tightly. Robbie was only 17 and he just didn't look anything like a footballer. There were Bay 13 Melbourne supporters who saw that he was too skinny, he had a surname that in the hippie world of 1973 was made for mocking, and for the first quarter and a half I sat among Melbourne supporters some of whom were shouting out their opinion that he should be taken off and Alves put back onto his wing. Fortunately the Match Committee had seen what others didn't - that was vision - and ignoring all the visible negatives, they gave him a go. Robbie was like any young kid given a chance, he only wanted to play, and he went for it regardless of his limitations. As the game went on it became apparent that no matter what he looked like the Geelong players couldn't get the ball off him, and by the second half the fans in Bay 13 were laughing out loud - with delight and amazement - every time he went for it. It hadn't been just the supporters, either - Robbie tells the story of having to pay at the turnstile before his first game because the fellow on the players' gate didn't believe him; he says that when he was introduced around the team before his first game Greg Wells looked him up and down and said "you've got to be joking!" But somebody took none of that into account. So who are the heroes of our club who made the call on Robbie? That is what we have to create again - not another Robbie Flower (if only!), but a can-do approach. A trust-the-players'-talent approach. Why insist they can't be expected to beat everyone yet? What good does that do? Will they be more crushed by defeat if they actually thought they were expected to have won the game? I'm not just talking about people getting games either, but about honouring the skills of our players, letting them do what they were doing that got them recruited; the coaches looking for and being entirely focused on facilitating them doing their thing. Giving up the pre-planned unimaginative expectations and formulas that are modelled on the average. I can remember Jakovich kicking bag after bag in the reserves and still not getting picked because somebody reckoned he wasn't quite right. He was more than right, if they only could have seen it. What a waste - a lack of vision - to have left him in the Reserves while the seniors were losing games. Where do we get having Moloney thrown out of leadership, when he's clearly on-field leadership? What I want to know is, do our coaching staff have faith in our players? We have recruited people who are supposedly the best that could be had. Do the coaching staff see these players as the recruiting staff saw them, not as we suppose they are today but as what they have got in them? Do the coaches talk and coach the future into being here now? If not, why not? Is the club and the coaching staff intent on inspiring our young players with a sense of how talented and valued they are? It doesn't sound or look like it, because all we hear is about "developing", "more pre-seasons", "not-our-window-yet", etc, and when it starts to go wrong on the field the players appear to accept this must be, and they give up, as though they aren't really schooled to expect to win every week and in any case they aren't in charge of it, they need somebody else as the experts to tell them how to play the game ... We have thank goodness dropped the defeatist mantra of "competitive", but still it seems that the message is "not yet". Are we waiting for our future to be ready, waiting God-help-us for the players to emerge out of the no-expectation-yet, and imagining that this will open up our "window"? Does Bailey talk our players up like Scott did his, or demand and make real in everyone's minds what everyone wants, like Hird apparently has? Do our players get told how good they are, how classy Jack Watts is ("so kick it to him!"), or are they like us fed the limp drivel of waiting till we have got rid of another 30, 50, etc more games, or so many more pre-seasons, etc, before we can expect it to happen? We calculate the average number of games before we'll be ready, we discount the more accelerated rises like Hawthorn's - and all this creates a mentality of impossible yet, of being average-only, of being too sensible to dream... And so, with the "don't expect too much", "ups and downs", blah blah blah, we just get more crap performances. Tell us the one about the fire again, or the "emblem"... Did someone somewhere have a vision of that being real, now? Or was all that just window-dressing that nobody actually believed in? Small wonder other clubs are climbing straight past us... Crawl off in a corner somewhere, is what I say, and think out some belief - or get out of the way for someone who can. You will inevitably coach exactly according to what you believe; so, if you can't really see it, and you can't really believe it, you should get out. If you do believe it, stop giving us the fire-hose every time you speak. The supporters want the fire.

Yes, I'm old too, and no doubt just don't understand modern tactics. I don't. But we didn't used to lose this way. 1. In the old days, the runner would be sent out from the coach telling the player to man up, get on your man! Bailey does not appear to send the runner with this message, which suggests he is not concerned about Melbourne players not manning up when the opposition have the ball. Seems likely enough that not manning up is what Bailey requires from them. So, when West Coast took a mark and went back for the kick, Melbourne players took up positions 15 metres away from "their man", and with arms out guarded empty space, while the West Coast player with the ball took his choice of his free team-mates, and kicked it to one of them. This was repeated until West Coast either stuffed up or had a shot on goal. Week after week, we leave free players the length of the field, giving the new "MFC free kick" all the way to goal. Even on TV you can see plainly where the opposition kicks are inevitably going to go. If Bailey supposes this tactic will result in us being free to run when we get the ball, great idea, only that it clearly doesn't work. Not only do we leave the opposition free use of the ball, but also they don't seem to have any difficulty in closing in on us when we do get a possession. From the How-to-play-football manual, when the opposition have possession, and when they are slaughtering us, MAN UP!!!! 2. Small wonder we look unfit and slow, when we spend most of the game running like crazy after the players we left that regulation 15 metres in the clear... With our poor starts, we are half-exhausted from the handicap chasing we do all game before we begin to try out our own game-plan. It worked against Sydney last year only because we jumped them before we had done our repeated 30 metre sprints desperately trying to catch-up the start we give away at every opposition possession... 3. Small wonder we look dispirited. 4. I wonder if anyone has asked the elite juniors that we've recruited, the cream of the young performers of the land, what they know that made them such stars in the junior competitions we selected them from. Jack Watts for example was known to be instinctive, fast and a dead shot at goal. How'd he come to the idea that he should now abandon everything that got him chosen in the draft, and go nervous and goal-shy? Nobody looks more confused about "manning up" that poor hard-working Jack. Why is our talent-laden forward line playing mainly in the backline? How about the coach telling them to trust their skills, hold your ground, it'll come? Be there for when we do get a clear kick forward, that's your big moment... (And be there also so you can keep it in there!) These young players had performed with greater distinction, prior to coming to MFC, than Bailey ever did. With out list management policy over the past three years, they have been treated as, and in fact are, our "talent capital". Why not let their natural skills be part of how they are instructed to play? What if Aaron actually is a small forward? I still remember Robbie being moved to the backline...