Carrot Top

If I was the coach, and I found out they'd been reading here I'd delist them because it would show that they didn't have the brains to boil a kettle let alone play AFL in the high pressure cooker that it is. This is a fan site. Fans are irrational. It would be like giving away a stupid free and then running to the fence to ask 10,000 people their opinion of it. Any player with some sort of brain would put a perma block on this place.

If it gives the mids confidence to deliver it to them ASAP then it's a good line up. If the mids hum and har, and then look to give it to a second or third option on the flanks because the forwards are all crowding each other then it's a bad line up. Only game time will tell, but I think we have enough brains in the coaches box to get that right. Having too much talent isn't a bad thing. Misusing that talent is.

Don't be so harsh on him. The drugs he took probably scrambled his mind.

How come they always make us play teams that finished above us? Rigged, I tells ya.

I think we should get some more licences. If we could make 20 odd million p/a off them we'd be kicking goals on and off the field with the money we could use to support the club.

Damn. I wish I'd thought of that. Now where is that bloody like button?

Essendon: We're sorta drug free now

We're a rock bottom. And the statement is true. But flip it over and ask yourself how much us all talking up kids as the next big thing helped us make the finals over the last couple of years? This stuff is deserved until we start winning games. Until then we just have to cop it.

Ummm... isn't that why Scully was given the big bucks?

Very true. For the first time in a very long time they've been given everything they could ask for. It's now up to them. They can be excused the first half of the season as they adapt to new ways of doing things, and as Roos finds out the right team balance for his plans, but by round 16 the questions on development vs bad recruiting vs lack of desire will be answered about many players.

Essendon and Implode just fit so well together. I hope I hear them used in the same sentence more often this decade.

Not me. I love putting unrealistic expectations on all of them. If young JHK doesn't kick ten and get a rising star award in round one I shall boo him for the rest of his career.

Geez some people have no sense of proportion. Neeld might have been a crap leader of men, and was promoted Peter Principle style, but his tenure wasn't entirely without positives. The list he left us with wasn't as bad as the ladder position suggests, and for those gushing about how fit we look under Roos should think a bit and wonder if that fitness might not have suddenly appeared in October or maybe... just maybe... it was because Neeld flogged it into them over the previous two pre-seasons. To me Neeld had a pretty good plan - a plan that it's not very dis-similar to the Roos plan, but he went about it arse about in some ways; didn't have the man management skills or the gravitas to sell the hard work and changes he was playing; his game plan was too much theory and not enough reality (bus, perhaps), and he was trying to do too much too fast at a club that was completely dysfunctional. But he understood that you can tick all the boxes in this game, but without having a hard, fit team you haven't really ticked any boxes at all. Verdict: a crap coach, but one that tackled some of the harder problems that we had, and who left us with the bare bones of the bigger, tougher team we need.

The ASADA is smart enough not to talk while they put the case together, and the AFL is stupid enough to think it'll go away if they ignore it.

If we were 3 and 2 after 5 games I'm make a shrine to Roos worship at it each day. A couple of years ago I was listen to SEN and they had Robert Shaw on talking stats. It must have been on or around round one, but he tossed out the stat that if you won the first two games you had a (I can't remember the real one so let me play a bit loose with this) 75% chance of being in the top eight. If you were in the eight you after round five then you were (say) 90% assured of playing in September. OK the stats are made up but the gist was real: get it right at the start of the year, and unless the wheels fall off in a big way you'll be there at the end. Another thing he mentioned was that each year one team from the top 4 drops to the bottom half of the eight, and one falls out of it completely. Also that there is always a team that makes a leap from nowhere to almost good team. I'm sure none of this is perfect, but over the last decade it's pretty close. Get a good start, and all of a sudden you become the hunter and not the hunted.

Rest it all you want, but you're the people that want to play up the differences between white and black Australia, and how that should give a certain sector a cop out on not acting in a socially acceptable way. I see a man that needs a good kick up the arse. You see a child that needs to be coddled and have his boo-boos kissed better. You think that because of who he is and where he comes from he isn't a fully rational and reasoning human being. It's as bad as the 19th century attitudes, and just as damaging.

Bollocks. It's got nothing to do with his race. It has to do with him acting like a moron that impacts on the rest of society. If anything the racism comes from the chardonnay sipping set that make apologies for his idiotic behavior based on his race. He is an adult male who needs to be held responsible for his actions, not some sort of child that doesn't know any better.

Bloody hell. The AFL HQ has lost the plot completely. Are they worried he'll spike the eggnog with 'riods?

We didn't have too many non girl-like players last year (or the year before that, or the year before that, or the...), so the one that said it needs to be in a select group to get away with it. Not sure how you thnk sowing these seeds helps the club though,

Talent is wonderful, but G&D like that makes me fall in love with a player. There has been far too few players around the club in recent years willing to do that on game day, let alone at training. Early days sure, but sounds good so far.

Naming three is hard. Hogan is going to be number one on the watch list because.. well we all know why. But other than that it's a hodge podge of players that seem to have talent but have looked lost over the last couple of years. Hopefully a coach with a clue can un-lost them. The mids will be my primary focus - with them breaking even or winning in more games than they don't then we should look a much better team given our forwards look very strong, and our backs pretty solid.

History is the autobiography of a madman - Alexander Herzen. The more I read the less I like the human race, but then I remind myself that the good parts of humanity never make it into the history books.

It doesn't mean that. Far from it. The more you study a subject the more you realise the less you know about - although you do understand that you know more about than most people. What that piece of paper means is that you have demonstrated that you can apply critical reasoning and research in trying to understand the subject. That gives you a much greater chance at arriving at the truth than someone that accepts half truths, BS and misunderstandings from beer or coffee chats. * Myriad means 10,000. Have you really spoken to 10,000 participants that have knowledge of B-52 raids into Cambodia post 1975, or that can provide proof that those raids were the reason the Khmer Rouge were smashed by the Vietnamese?

Bollocks. You made that swarmy Bruce Ruxton reference, and that 'vocal' vet call. You painted him a fraud without knowing anything but a guarded paragraph or two. But if the mods would be so kind as to split this into the off topic section, I'd appreciate it. As a history grad - with a special interest in military history and politics, I'd love to give you the schooling you so deserve. You watch too many movies... you need to read more... And I note you didn't address the B52 facts that you were caught with your hand down your pants on.

Never voted left in my life laddie. And never will. Never said he wasn't forced. I really wouldn't know as the conversations with the 'vocal' vet never got that far. Unlike you I was happy to let it rest rather that accuse him of lying because I did 15 years as an air force clerk. And you really have no idea about what you are talking about re: B52 raids. The last B52 raid into Cambodia was in 1973. The KM took control in 1975. The KM was toppled by the Vietnamese in 1979. You're playing me on my home ground, and you're kicking into a gale. Are you sure you want to continue this game?