Undeeterred

The AFL isn't bound by the rules of natural justice, sorry. They can't do whatever they like.

Totally guessing, but if you bust it down to clangers per possession, you might get a different picture. Also, that doesn't measure the scale of some of the abolsute howlers JMac puts in.

Seriously?? http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/a-timeline-on-tanking-in-the-afl-20121030-28h8n.html How ridiculous. The tanking 'timeline' goes back a hell of a lot further than August 2009, let me tell you...

Hang on, I've lost track. Is that 6 vacanies, to be filled including those out of contract, or excluding? Ie, those last 4 have to go, if we are going to use say 3 ND picks and 1 PSD pick? Or do we have 6 extras to include, even if we recontract all 4 of them?

No big deal - that will upgrade our pick 49 to 48.

Haha, glad we are in furious agreement.

This, however, is not good: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/tanking-affair-afl-to-lift-the-lid-on-melbournes-vault-20121030-28h3c.html

I wasn't suggesting we would make the finals with those 3 in the team. The discussion was whether or not, if you were Neeld, you would prefer to bank on Dawes, Byrnes and Rodan moving you up the ladder, rather than Morton, Gysberts and Martin. What I said was, I'd prefer to have my career (which will be judged on improvement of the team) in the hands of the new, rather than departing, players.

To be fair, I'd rather put my career in the hands of Dawes and Byrnes than Morton, Gysberts, Cook, Bate, Bennell etc.

Yes, quite. Was taking a bigger picture approach than that, but sure. Take your point.

How different things might have been if we managed to get up in that game!!

This is about the only thing we could have done differently, but we'd have had to use 3 on Viney. So we would be in essentially the same position as we are, but using 13 and 26 on speculative mids, rather than having Hogan, Dawes and Barry. I rate our strategy a winner.

Can someone explain the intracies of this? Why is it draft tampering to specify which round pick you must be traded for? Or is the bigger problem the extra $200k? I've always found it interesting that the AFL has to approve each trade, on the basis that each party is receiving commercial value. I think if the club wants to trade for uncommercial reasons, why should the AFL stop it? And who is to say, for example, that Tippett for White and 23 is not commercial value, but Cale for 88 is? At risk of sounding ignorant, this whole situation confuses me.

Better than having a list of players who can't get a game at ours...

On the right track, but completely misunderstanding the motivation. It's the speed of the game that's important, not the ads. Same reason you can chuck it out of a pack now without being penalised. I think you are wrong. This will have similar impact to the centre circle rule, and look what that did to our last killer ruckman. You'll see heaps more stoppages where the rucks arent really in position, and blokes like Howe and Sylvia going up.

Doesn't say much, does it...

Are we seriously counting rd 1 as in the bag, before the trade period is even done? When will you people learn!!

Can you two take the nostalgic whining somewhere else?

Let's cross that bridge when we get to it, shall we??

Wow. Probably one of the more uninformed posts I've read on here, and that's saying something.

This is all about momentum. So we get a couple of good picks who make an impact, and a couple of more fringe FAs. We win 7 or 8 next year. It becomes more palateable to come to MFC, and we get one or two higher impact FAs next year, along with another early first rounder. We win 9 or 10 the next year. We are just building - it simply isn't going to happen overnight and we will need that slow build before a Cloke or a Goddard is really willing to come here.

I can't understand why there isn't more of this ^^^^

Sounds like someone is getting a new contract...

Maybe you're thinking of Beau Wilkes, who has kicked something like 12 goals in his entire career, and 7 or 8 of them were against us.

This is spot on. Sadly, because he has been up there as my favourite player for years now, and has put up with enormous amounts of crap football in the latter part of his career while never dropping his head. But you are right on - the need for him has probably passed.