Trengoove

Unfortunately, while it would be nice to blame the disparity between ourselves and sides like Collingwood on the AFL, the reality is somewhat different. Just as two businesses can provide similar products/services with wildly different revenue outcomes, so too can football teams. You mentioned unequal television coverage, driving inequality in sponsorship revenue. While this may be true, and while it may also influence the supporter base of the club to a degree, the difference in revenue does not stem solely from sponsorship. According to the 2014 annual reports of both clubs, major revenue items are as follows: Collingwood AFL distributions: $8.2 M Commercial Activities: $19.3 M Function centres and gaming venues: $23.0 M Membership and match day: $24.4 M TOTAL: $76.8 M Melbourne AFL distributions: $11.0 M Commercial Activities: $7.7 M Function centres and gaming venues: $11.7 M Membership and match day: $10.3 M TOTAL: $42.1 M Our commercial activities (which include sponsorship and merch) are $11.6 M less than Collingwood. This is undoubtedly supported by the excellent TV coverage they get etc. However, our membership and matchday revenue is $14.1 M less than their's while functions and gaming is $11.3 M less. That's a total of $25.4 M just in those two items, which can only really be put down to good management/investment by their club and the passionate financial backing of their supporters.

Not sure I get the sarcasm here. It's quite reasonable to suggest that given that less attractive nature of our club at the moment, in order to attract good players we would have to either: a) offer more money to players to attract them over, or b) offer more attractive trades to opposition teams to encourage them to push a trade. The only reasonable exception would be players to are not getting game time elsewhere (although these are likely not the sort of players we are after) Seems relatively reasonable I would have thought.

I am not completely sure how you could come to any other conclusion re Davey other than that he has been asked to retire. Why else would he suggest that he would be open to playing on elsewhere? As long as 2 and 2 still equal 4 then id suggest you pull your head out of the sand. Beemer had one down year after winning the bnf and had issues with coaches who have been proven ineffectual and widely panned. Furthermore, he was excluded from leadership in favour of two unproven young players, another decision which has been demonstrated to be poor. Again, you can fob this off as childish on Monoley's side however good players dont get treated like this at other clubs and invariably dont become high performing members of other teams. You have conceded, Junior as is fair. The others were all pushed out by age of 30. I am completely comfortable to admit that some of these players were due retirement, however not all and this trend doesnt seem to happen at any other club than us. I am also not saying that we didnt make the most of some trades, we did very well to get some high picks our of Trav and Woey however it again only highlights our willingness to move on players who have put in at our club. In the end you can sit back and say we have done the right thing however our performance is on the board and it's very poor. I cant help but think that the poor culture and unwillingness to play for the jumper is equally matched by an unwillingness from the club to stand by players.

Hey, So I was thinking the other day, in light of the issues we have had with retaining players and the lack of i guess loyalty to seasoned players, that we our best and fairest has been something of a poisoned chalice. So I had a look at the winners list and I found it quite remarkable. 2012 Nathan Jones 2011 Brent Moloney (traded) 2010 Brad Green (forced retirement) 2009 Aaron Davey (forced retirement) 2008 Cameron Bruce (traded) 2007 James McDonald (forced retirement) 2006 James McDonald (forced retirement) 2005 Travis Johnstone (traded) 2004 Jeff White (forced retirement) 2003 Russell Robertson (forced retirement) 2002 David Neitz 2001 Adem Yze (forced retirement) 2000 Shane Woewodin (traded) Not really a great sign when the best players in our team (and we can,t really say non performing as they have demonstrated performance by winning the bnf to begin with) are being pushed out or allowed to leave so easily. It would be hard to say that this isnt part of our problem, especially when it highlights a culture of blaming the few good players we have for the overall performance of a poor list. Thoughts??

Actually love your one Stuie. Has a really good feel to it. Very strong and bold with a retro feel to it which remembers our past without overdoing things. I think our current logo is a little over-designed and lacks the simplicity that should really come with a good logo.

We can't show you evidence that these players are going to leave however I think we have grounds for concern. Jolly, Bruce, Yze, White, Robertson, MacDonald, Thompson, Mclean, Scully, Moloney, Rivers, Morton, Gysberts These players show a lack of want, effort or culture in retaining both young and experienced players.

I don't quite understand the lack of interest the club seems to have in keeping experienced players within the club. Whether the problem is Neeld, the culture, the lack of wins or simply a poorly conceived notion of rebuilding through youth, i don't know, but it is going to severely slow any rebuild that we attempt and in my opinion it is the reason we are at the beginning of rebuild number two. Everyone in football, including our coaching panel seems to agree that number of games and experienced players is fundamental to afl success however throughout the rebuilding process we seem content with the idea of losing more and more experienced players without anything sort of reasonable attempt to stem the losses. Neeld raised his five year plan the other day. Who is going to be leading our back line in 5 years time if we lose Frawley? And who is going to replace the 80 games we have put into Watts??? And where is out experienced bigger body in the midfield/forward going to come from without a Sylvia?? So basically we are going to take our current team, allow arguably the 3 most talented players to leave and this will improve our side?? I am very frustrated, as I'm sure we all are.

Davey is notably absent from most of these lists. Forgive me but iv been overseas this whole year and have tried to catch as much as i can but find the davey diappearance strange. Given that he disappeared in the midfield this year and given that he seems to go a bit missing in the hard games, wouldnt it be worth putting him back where he started up forward. This way we have a dangerous small forward that we are missing to put some tackling pressure back in there. Id much prefer him performing in the forward line that going missing elsewhere.

Have no idea if its true and no source to back things up but just saw this on BF opsted by a western syd supporter. "Yep congratulations are in order to you guy's I have just heard on very good authority, from someone from gws he has turned down the gws offer. I don't know when this will be confirmed but gws were hoping to have a presser on tuesday but were informed at 4.30 this afternoon that he will not be taking up the offer. I can see the egg on faces now, anyway congratulations if that's the young man's wishes I respect him" Might be rubbish...might not be. fingers crossed

C'mon really... There's optimism then there's psychosis Feel free to continually beat on a bunch of kids who lost 4 games in a row to 4 of the top 5 teams 4 teams who have been unbeaten for the past month no matter who they played. 4 teams that have been beaten 10 times all year (other than by each other) and 4 of those were Collingwood. Cheer up a bit

The last month of football for MFC has not been good. Coming away with no victories and rather having 4 beltings has lead to wide abuse of the club and i keep hearing from opposition, friends and even supporters here that we are rubbish and miles away from being decent. I honestly dont think the reality is as bad as everyone is making out. Yes we have lost a few but that reality with a developing list against some good teams. For this reason iv had a look back at this years performances of all teams against the 4 teams we have played in WC, Geel, Hawth, Carlt. These are the results: Melb - 0 wins 7 loses Coll - 4 wins 1 loss Ess - 2 wins 1 draw 2 losses Syd - 1 win 4 losses Adel - 1 win 4 losses Rich - 0 win 5 losses Stk - 1 win 4 losses Free - 0 win 6 losses North Melb - 0 win 4 losses Brisb - 0 win 3 losses West Bull - 1 win 4 losses Port - 0 win 6 losses Gold Coast - 0 win 5 losses Youl see that gold coast, melbourne, brisbane, port, north, freo, richmond (also carlton) have all gone winless against these teams. Sydney, adel, saints and dogs all had 1 win. Also over the past month no team has beaten these four in form teams Obviously we have been well beaten rather than competitive but based on results, half the teams in the afl would have had a similar month (possibly even more accounting for those with 1 win four losses) if coupled with the inevitable loss of confidence that such a month would bring. Just an observation, doesnt really count for so much but i dont think we are as far behind as everyone seems to think and lets hope to break the streak come Sunday.

Sorry, figures arent meant to be realistic...just demonstrating that the club cannot afford in negotiations to simply offer Scully what he is worth at the present moment to the club. Over the odds offers have to be made to players you want to keep, as with a highly restricted trade market Scully is not a replaceable player.

I wish it was this easy but the AFL has alot more restrictions on player movement than MLB. Also, even given the Scully saga, player loyalty seems a more prevalent occurance within AFL culture. This means that such a system will never be possible as clubs are not able to easily replace a 'scully' with a player they believe to be of equivalent value. For example, if this were the case and we really believed Scully to be worth say 300 000 a season we would offer no more than this as we could easily recruit an equivalent player in by just offering a fair price. Furthermore, if we thought he could become an 800 000 player we would never offer him so much now as we could simply over slightly above the odds to any other 800 000 player in now or in the future. The reality is that player of the potential of a Scully dont come around so often and are incredibly hard to gain on the trade market. Therfore we find ourselves in our current position where we are considering offering him more than 3 times his present value for the chance to have him around when he might be good enough to pay that back. I dont like the idea of offering such a young player so much but i understand that the club has no choice but to play the game.