Demon Dynasty

Unless the AFL put a cap on the amount of money that clubs can spend on their FD's we will continue to see discrepancies .

And the gap is probably going to get wider .

Collingwood have a gross income of about 70 mil . Ours is about 40 mil . ( up from 26 mil just a few years ago ) Because of our small supporter/member base we've got "Buckleys chance" of bridging the gap to a great extent .

But , the thing in our favour is that their may be a ceiling on how much a FD "spend" is really effective .

Say , after around about 20 mil , it may just be wasted money . I mean , how many sets of weights , exercise bikes , masseurs , diet plans , ovals to train on , sports scientists , coaches etc etc etc do you need ? Surely you get to a point where anything more would be unnecessary . One multi vitamin a day is sufficient , any more and you're peeing bright orange !!

We don't hear about these sort FD type spends in other big sports around the world . I suspect it's because they've reached their zenith .

Still reckon we've got a bit of catching up to do but it seems a lot of things are in place right now .

Cheers

Interesting Macca. Kind of a "spend versus results/return" issue. I'm sure there would be specialist studies showing that you get a certain amount of bang for your buck, up to a point in a team sport sense. Then after that point, your return on the spend (ie., improved ladder position over a rollling 3 year comparative period or whatever) starts to deminish percentage wise. I don't know about it not being effective though. I still think if you spend enough $, and use it wisely, it will pay off at some stage.

A bit like a formula 1 race team. And this is just a hypothetical....don't hold me to any of these numbers please lol. The mininum spend is (or was) something like $25 mil per annum to get a team on the track and racing....but possibly finishing somewhere near bottom during the year, say around 10th to 12th (team wise). However, say by spending only another $5 mil to make the total spend $30 mil, your team should be able to match it with teams around 6th to 8th (improvement wise) assuming you have 2 reasonably qualified and skilled drivers. An improvement of at least 2 positions on the prior position for $5 mil spent. However afterwards, any 1 second gain per lap, and approximately 1 step up in position on the team's finishing position for the year, again costs another $5 mil (or something disproportionate when compared to the initial spend versus amount gained).

In other words, to reach the pinacle (ie., GF and hopefully a cup), dissproportionate amounts of $$ need to be spent versus....

The base minimum required to get the team on the park (and keep them there) and maybe a small increase on this initial base amount, which still only sees your team move up from the bottom into the middle or lower middle rungs.

So we would need a massive spend, maybe double (or something around the Pies $70 mil budget), to see our team make the GF in say 5 years? Just speculating. I really have no idea of course. Just extending on your subject matter.

But isn't that the whole bone of contention - "where are we HONESTLY at" - budgets do preclude you from developing your whole player list from reaching their highest potential. Access to good picks stand for nothing if you cant develop them.

What comes first the chicken or the eggs. Its clear the facts are pointing toward if you dont at least match your opposition FD departments spend you wont get to the "pointy end"

You read just like another poster on here last year......what was his name? Had a chimp icon...nick name escapes me...anyone?

Well , what was clear .

Ian Ridley and his committee were pro merger .

The committee held many , many proxy votes . The exact number , we're unsure . How many were used , we're also unsure .

So , in the end , you and I have differing opinions on the outcome of those votes . Fair enough .

It wasn't just creative use of proxy votes. It was how they derived them as well If my memory serves me correct.

At a late stage, just prior to the vote, there was talk of one or more board members handing out free memberships to staff members at their work place (who weren't even MFC supporters) on the privoso they voted for the merger by proxy. Seem to recall this happened in a rush, just prior to the official close off of memberships.

Probably only talking a small number but every little bit helps when votes are in the balance.

I'm sure those who received them are still with us, supporting the club through thick & thin!

Every AFL player and ex-player, as stated by Cam Mooney on radio this afternoon, knows that your form leading up to round 1 is a definite gauge on how you're likely to start the season. You can't turn form on like a tap. While I'm happy to acknowledge that the coaches are trialling systems previously foreign to the players and that we're a work in progress I'd also be a fool if I thought 'nothing' should be read into these matches. We've got a lot of work to do.

Yeh i heard Cam interviewed late in the week on this. He was definite that you have to, at the very least, find some sort of form coming into the last full hit out before the real deal.

The one positive to take from this game for me is that in our last 14 trips there we've lost by an average of 55 points. At least we bettered it this time. So the emphasis on a new defensive strategy is working then eh!

Cam,

Nice to hear from you.

I don't care much for issues off the field but one thing I will say; please get rid of the trumpet.

Regards,

Weapon

Not sure Cam has anything to do with the trumpeter playing or not but i agree. The only time i wish to hear that style of playing is when a bugler belts out the last post on Anzac day. Sad, somber but nonetheless fitting for the occasion.

However, Cam does have a say into the "style" and "direction" of our off and on field marketing

Part of the off field marketing material says....

"Hard Work, Hard Minds, Hardcore Demons".

We are Demons yes?

And we sure as hell need to fire up....especially for the start of our matches

It's time to fire up before the match and get the supporters goin!

It's time for some Hard Rock and a little theatre to go with the rest of the hardness message Cam

AC/DC - "HELLS BELLS" for mine.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maaweWsN7I4&feature=related

After all, Demons are quite at home....in HELL!

Picture this pre match at our home games....

Two minor demon minions (maybe female ones...cough) slowly wheel a black gothic bell onto the arena...a fully kitted winged Demon (or similar) awaits. But he hasn't felt the bells' presence just yet. He kneels on the ground holding his trident. Deep in contemplation. As the bell gets closer, he slowly rises to his full height, turns and faces the bell. Using the blunt end of his trident he begins to gong the bell as the song commences. Raising his fist as the first few bars of legendary Ozy guitarist Angus Young spills out into the arena!

Let our opponents Fear us....It's our G. This is our ground, our heritage. Lets make it their worst nightmare!

A place they will fear to come to and dread to play on!

Maybe our new home ground anthem!

I think our club is doing everything it can to improve itself "on field". More so than i've witnessed at any other time during the time i've followed it anyway. But turning a leaky rusty boat into a super hardened top liner overnight just isn't plausible. It's a long drawn out process that'll require lots of sweat, hard work, time, plenty more of the green folding stuff PLUS some very hard trade decisions in the coming years, in order to right this vessel.

Much time, patience, trial and error and sorting out needed prior to seeing the light i reckon.

Reminds me of 1988....yet again....

Thanks WYL....

Don't take too much from it. Only the NAB. Besides, it's gonna take Neeld and team a whole year and a half to sort out this lot (and build them up physically/mentally) after the last few years and the debacle that Bailey left behind. He'll need at least 3 years to turn them into a consistantly competative unit that can take on the top 5 on any given week and then challenge for the big one therafter IMO. Much patience needed fellow demonoids.

LOL poor old Cale - maybe he is actually in that photo he is just too skinny to be perceived by the naked eye. Either that or Beamer ate him.

Dr. your sources are excellent mate.

This badge is spot on! The club was quite correct issuing this.

It shows a very full, satisfied and bulked up Beamer having eaten Cale Morton for breakfast.

Although the club did forget to add the the caption underneath which would have read ...

"Pffft....anymore where that came from fellas?"

P.S. The club's not being "completely" honest when it tells you that Morton's out injured!

The rule is there to prevent someone taking a mark on the goal line, and walking outside 50, to take a kick for 9.

Makes sense

You mean to say the coach would allow this sort of thing if the rules allowed?

Player: .... "So what if i got nothin from that great piece of play coach. As you know, i'm a huge kick, so i just thought i'd take a mighty long run up....you know.....50 yards back of the goal square where i marked it....just to be sure i had a good chance of gettin meself 9 points instead of that certain 6 points i had directly in front of goal. Only a [censored] wld kick it from directly in front!"

Coach: .... "anyone seen Todd around?"

Whoa boys! Eeezy now! Gettin a lil ahead of ourselves maybe? Where's Old Dee?

Carlton haven't won yet and Melbourne beat Collingwood.

Honestly, such an absurd result should tell you how seriously Collingwood is taking the NAB Cup.

Then couldn't we then extrapolate from that, that the Dees are equally not serious about this, yet we still beat the Pies and so we are still better than them (even in a half hearted contest) ;-)

Not telling anyone anything new here, but obviously each club has it's own methods of trialing and testing different players in many varied positions during the NAB, and obviously trialing out alot more options and methods than when the season proper commences and real points are up for grabs. This makes it a little risky to try and measure any performance by IMO.

The thing is, we know what the Pies and Blues are capable of in very recent times. The results were there for all to see at the end of last season. As were our results to that point

Yes it's a new season, but the core group of players within most of the more senior 'developed' top sides doesn't change that much from last year to the beginning of this year. Or looking at it alternatively, one could argue a higher percentage of their playing group is already very mature or very close to it in terms of relative experience (games played/Finals played). As for us, our group and it's development is changing fairly rapidly by the month apart from a smaller (percentage wise) core group of more senior players. So IMO we're more of an unknown quantity going into the season proper when compared to the likes of the Blues and the Pies. We truly have no idea how we might perform once the real deal begins.

So yeh, i'm with RPFC here. Not taking too much notice of results from the NAB cup. Sorry bout that last line Steve lol.

If history is anything to go by (and yes i realise this is so far in the past it doesn't have much, if any, bearing on today's situation), about the only time i'd sit up and take "SOME" notice of our form in the NAB is if we made it to the GF and win it. We won in 87 and scraped into 5th in the real season. We won in 1989 against the Cats and finished the real deal in 4th, one rung below them. We also had the worst percentage of the top 5 teams that year. I haven't looked at the outcome of other teams who've won the night GF over many years though, so maybe a case could be made to argue that winning it is a fair indicator (but still not a great one) of form going into the real season (supporting my view), or maybe it isn't and it's a shoddy indicator. But i'll leave that little doozy for someone else on here to look into!

Any takers?

The free was inside 50 against Thomas, the mark has to be outside 50 for a SG.

Ok. I thought it was where you took the kick from, but no doubt you're correct as no one blinked an eye. Rule seems a little dodgy to me. Like if you want to kick from outside whether it's a free or mark, or in general play, what's the difference? You still kicked it from outside 50

I noticed that, none of the commentators brought it up, and neither did dunn or any other player. Maybe we were just looking at a bad angle?

Yep. I noticed that too. I looked at it again on the replay and it isn't 100% conclusive that he missed stepping on the 50 arc so who knows. Maybe he did step over it slightly. Surprised no one said anything on or off the field though.

Not that it effected the outcome but just curious. Can anyone please explain to me why Dunn was only awared 6 points for his super goal (yes he kicked it from a metre or so outside 50) with about 8 minutes to go in the last?

After last year's debacle, it shouldn't be too hard to improve in most aspects of the on field performance this year. Not expecting anything spectacular this year though. Other than the usual improvements that we all want to see eg., hardness at the ball, more 2nd & 3rd efforts (fitness and conditioning, including the mental side), accuracy of delivery inside 50, the press starting to work in our favour instead of most other teams we play, less players being played (ie., less injuries) etc.

One aspect of last year i would really love to see illiminated is less of the 'big win / big loss' ups and downs from week to week (ie., which team is gonna turn up this week...the real Demons or?). Neeldy needs this year just to sort the wheat from the chaff and discover who the real deal is and what holes need to be filled to get us to the ultimate prize (or at least a realistic go at it) in a few years time. In addition the players will also need time to find "their" place and role and carry out the instructions under a new coach, game plan, strategies etc.

Like some others here, I can see him as potentially being our next Red Fox, but he is only human after all and he (and his team) won't truly know where we're at until a good way through the season proper.

Regardless of who is at the helm, i think we're at least one more pre season away from matching it with middle of rung teams on a consistant basis just from a pure physical/fitness/size point of view . My guess is a 10th or 11th (give or take a rung) finish this year. Of course i wont say no to any improvement on that lol.

This all points to something more substantial in 2013. Eg., a likely bottom 8 finals birth.

Good luck to Neeld and all the boys. Lets hope we can do ourselves (and especially Jimmy) real proud.

MIGHTY DEMONS FOREVA!

Did the club originally have a flag .....as an emblem? Do we have a flag now but not used much?

The only 'flag' I've seen are those little ones on a stick you buy to wave at a game (with the logo on it).

I've never really got the connection with a flag and an emblem.

And I don't think the flag is a reference to the old premiership pennants (flags)....or is it?

My understanding Daisy, and confirmed by Wiki (not that it's the be all or the ultimate reliable source lol) is that we were originally often referred to as the Melbourne redlegs sometime during the 1870's as a result of the following.....

..."The name "Redlegs" was coined after a Melbourne official returned from a trip to England with one set of red and another of blue woollen socks. Melbourne wore the red set while the blue set were, allegedly, given to theCarlton Football Club. This may be the source of Carlton's nickname, 'The Blueboys'."

To me there should be some reference to us as the mighty redlegs in the song ....somewhere. I wouldn't be adverse to the song's lyrics being tweaked somehow to include it. Although in reality a totally new version would probably have to be recorded.

Having said that, i prefer the original fable singers version of our song by a country mile. When the newer version was released (whenever it was struck, as i don't believe there was ever any formal announcement, asking of members' opinions or launch of the song.....it just appeared) i could pick it straight up. It's a slightly more up tempo smaltzy 'auto tuned' (or is it an auto vibrato?) attempt at a modern day "fable" copy. S.E.N. use it all the time unfortunately. It completely sucks versus the old gutsy and real fable voice version....without the fake (GAY!!) vibrato!!

The soul and spirit of the club now that's for sure. What an effort to just get there. Inspiration enough, let alone getting up to speak. Go Jimmy!

I guess it depends on your monitor size and in turn the size of the window you are using to display the page. IPB definitely use a fluid width. Even a fluid with will produce a scroll bar if the window size is small.

see here:

Solved it..... thanks.... it's all coming back to me

Sorry about that but I'm juggling work, a 4 week old, a 3 year old, demonland and a life. Really very sorry for ignoring you amongst all that.

To answer your query the board is already set as fluid and not fixed.

Ok... just that the fluid (auto scale/width) aint workin' here as far as i can tell (bottom scroll bar! )....

~ ducks under the coffee table watching for flying glasses, plates....and soiled napies

Not sure if you got this from last evening Andy as i actually replied to you via Mono who was also asking if it was opossible to condense lines and/or fit them to page width if possible....>>>

"Andy... not wanting to tell you "how to" as i'm only a novice when it comes to CSS and web design, but any possibility you could try a fluid page layout using a percentage (%) or 0 under percentage in the CSS page wrap command? I think that might help the page auto re-size (scale) in almost any browser and screen resolution. One thing i enjoyed on the previous site was that it auto scaled (from memory i think so anyway) so i didn't need to use the bottom scroll bar to read the sentances in each post. They just fitted/scaled into the screen size (res). This might cause other significant issues of course so not expecting any miracles either."

End (thanks for listening lol)

Well that went down a treat

Not technically a trade/delisting issue, but according to todays Age, Emma Quayle believes highly touted Casey defender Tim Mohr is likely to be one of the players GWS take as a pre-listed player (ie. They get a free hit on guys not on lists who have previously nominated for drafts, think Krakouer, Mzungu last year).

Is a BIG unit and has an AFL ready bod. Haven't seen enough of him to know what he offers though.

You seen much of him Dave?

The main problem is that I'm finding whilst trying to troubleshoot things is that different browsers and different platforms and different devices display things differently and it is a pain in the butt trying to make everyone on every possible device/platform/browser happy - including myself.

Eg: The issue above where the name of the topic starter under the topic title appears larger than the topic title is like that on the iPhone but appears perfectly fine on my Mac in all browsers, that is, the Topic Title is in a larger font than the person who started underneath it. Very frustrating. Nothing I can do about that. I will leave it the way it is because it is easier to zoom on the iPhone.

Not sure if you got this from last evening Andy as i actually replied to you via Mono who was also asking if it was opossible to condense lines and/or fit them to page width if possible....>>>

"Andy... not wanting to tell you "how to" as i'm only a novice when it comes to CSS and web design, but any possibility you could try a fluid page layout using a percentage (%) or 0 under percentage in the CSS page wrap command? I think that might help the page auto re-size (scale) in almost any browser and screen resolution. One thing i enjoyed on the previous site was that it auto scaled (from memory i think so anyway) so i didn't need to use the bottom scroll bar to read the sentances in each post. They just fitted/scaled into the screen size (res). This might cause other significant issues of course so not expecting any miracles either."

End (thanks for listening lol)

All we have to do now is make every draft selection a winner and hopefully do a bit of trading that will boost the overall competitiveness of the group.

Not sure we'll get every selection a winner Rob. But would be nice to get the next half dozen bang on the money though eh

On a more serious note, now that we have Neeld on board. Add some serious grunt and structure on and off the field (such as the Misson coup) and with some light showing by the end of next year and beyond, we might even finally start seeing the occasional 'out of contract' experienced star looking to join us with a sniff of a little silverware just around the bend. Finally the occasional disgruntled or opportunistic top liners looking to us for greener pastures and filling some of those gaps to take us to the next level!

We're really making a fist of it arent we.

Its as if weve decided to stop stuffing around and get serious.

Looks that way Belze. With Gazza in the driving seat whippin' the horses! And Neeld having just grabbed hold of some of the reigns as well yellin' "shove over bro".

This might have been the year it dawned upon the club as a whole, that we were probably trying hard in some areas, but actually when you stripped all the fanfare away....we were quite amaturish, in a comparative sense, with the big boys. The Cats may have actually done us a big favor. Obviously the top clubs have the $$, players and recent success and all that comes with it, resulting in them being a few years ahead of the rest of the pack.

But i think we've finally realised that to be the best we have to become the best, or at least try and match them as best we can from the top down.

Misson being just one more piece of a very complex puzzle.

But we seem to be putting the pieces together quite nicely so far eh.

Now for 40,000+ members in 2012 and another big sponsor on the other side of the jumper!

And with success on the field in a few years....who knows....pushing 50,000 by 2014/2015

The Demon train has only just begun rollin' me thinks!

My only concern at this point would be if Gazza jumps off before the full rebuild is complete. Hopefully he'll recognise he's still required until then and stay on for as long as it takes. Who knows, he might even change his mind and stay on indefinitely.