Fitz Fitzpatrick

What has this world come to that you can no longer hang crap on your mates for looking like a couple of batties. Gee humanity needs to lighten up!! These guys are young blokes. A footy club locker room is a mans world. I wish these PC Utopians would get with reality. Let's keep sewing clubs feminine and sensitive but let's stop taking away environments where blokes can be blokes. I wouldn't know what to say to some of my mates if I couldn't call them a big Pooof when they were acting like a nancy. This hypersensitivity is so lame. Let boys be boys Btw the homosexuals get their Mardi gras, when do the polygamists of the world, themselves a minority group, start getting some recognition??

Chasing elite kids will kill this club. Every year will be one 18 yr old top pick in, one 26 yr old top 5 player out. One step fwd, two back. Can't survive like that. We need to chase senior players, so that the kids we already do have can win some footy games and the senior players will be more inclined to refuse FA Only way to break this cycle

First, aim to be an AFL standard team again. Has to be the only goal. Forget top four. Not even in the same stratosphere. Aim for 50:50 seasons

The club needs to realign the goals to save itself. Forget rebuilding for a premiership. That involves chasing talent in the draft. We don't have time for that. We need to rebuid for mid table. Only then, once the club is stabilized and SOME respect retained, should we then look to climb up the ladder. Rebuilding for a premiership is a bridge too far, which this vicious cycle will never allow.

Are we all relieved that we didn't lose by more to the Nth melb 2nds. We've fallen so far that we don't even see it anymore. We are world record bad and I fear this is too far gone to come back from. How do we claw back when we bleed talent every year to FA? One op draft pick every year topping up the the bottom of the list while the cream of the list leaves at the other end. Meanwhile the constant hammerings ensure any "culture rebuild " gets destroyed at every turn. This club is in a death spiral. Roos will come and go but we are witnessing the death rattle of the country's oldest football club. Bottoming out in time for the compromised drafts, timed with FA and the worst club admin in history was the sporting worlds perfect storm.

The fall off in the number of posts in post match threads compared to a few years ago correlates with our game day attendances and is indicative of the extreme apathy gripping supporters 8 years in to a catastrophic era for the MFC. I wish we could sue Schwab and Connolly. Seriously

Yep I got shouted down for calling it early - it's been obvious since the start of the season really. Watching those same posters slowly recognize the obvious has been mildly entertaining I must say

Watts has achieved nothing except going number 1 and people still seem seduced by that number. Sometimes recruiters get it wrong. In 2008 recruiters made a judgement error on a 17yr old playing school football. Yes he was widely considered a top 2 pick, as was Tambling. But hey, recruiting is nothing more than an educated guess. Lets look at what Jack can offer as a tall fwd - he can't compete in contested marked (cue J.bennell). So when he plays as a tall the side has a marking target that can't make a contest. Let's look at what he offers at half back - doesn't make contests, gets out bodied, won't apply defensive pressure. Fantastic skills if he has space but for one nice kick he will fail to impact contests. Many of his possessions are handballs back to a stationary player. Let's look at Jack in the midfield. Can't apply pressure, almost never wins the footy, his height means he struggles to get in low over the ball and often skirts clumsily around the contest, losing his feet. In short, Jack doesn't have a position on the AFL footy ground. He is not the only poor player and definitely not the worst but he is a guy who has some trade value due to that big number 1. He is not an AFL player. Has the body and the skills but just isn't a player. We can hope and dream but he is what he is - more proof that the big kid in high school footy won't always be able to take the next step

Remember a few years back when us and Nth were battling it out to be the next up and coming team and the footy world used to discuss which teams kids had the brightest future? What the hell happened?! Not really a discussion now hey....

wants her panties back

Exactly. We have to consider this year as 2008. the previous 5 years were wasted by poor recruiting/development and we are now back to where we were in 2008 - a shockingly poor list. These people that keep saying Blease or Watts or Tapscott need more time need to realise one thing - the list is shite and without top picks to trade with or use in the draft, the list will stay shite. We need to forget about 2009-2013 - those years were wasted. We are at the VERY beginning of a rebuild. The last rebuild was squandered so here we are again. The names mentioned above need to be removed as soon as they can be replaced by AFL standard players. Forget about trying to turn turds in to diamonds. Its over. We start again or we fail

There should be a team rule - whenever an opponent lays out a team mate with a cheap shot , every Melbourne player IMMEDIATELY runs straight to that bloke. 17 blue and red jumpers in Merretts face today. There needs to be an immediate threat of excessive force. Blokes like Merrett need to know that 'they will be coming'. Yes Frawley responded, but gee, it was a light bump and a finger point. I want to see every single bloke sprint from wherever they are, ignoring merretts team mates and going with a single focus - Merrett.

Damn! There goes my Jeremy Cameron and Treloar off season trade fantasy. damn you Chip

Its not the draft where the top pick is useful, its when its used as currency to secure a shiel or cameron ahead of another club. we need to stop looking at picks as only useful in the draft. picks are currency

We will achieve nothing but mid to lower table results with this list. I hate to say it but unless we can scoop up some elite talent as we skim off the bottom of our "J" curve then the long term future is bleak. Our list is absolutely Shiite. For the sake of short term pain we need to be in a strong position to collect a Petracca or a Cameron etc. No point moving forward with this list. All it will give us is a few mid table seasons until players leave and down we go again. Every good team this year had a bottoming out. We have had one but unfortunately had %$CKheads at the helm. Its sad but true - we have to visit the well again if we want a premiership calibre list in a few years time.. Why miss out on a Cameron for the sake of one ladder position. I dont buy in to FA trade targets being put off by our ladder postion. Anyone with a slight bit of ffoty nous can recognise the direction Roos has the club going. All it needs now is talent. Until Grimes, Terlich, etc are regular seconds players , we will only ever make up the numbers

the population has grown, predominately through immigration. Australia is a NET importer of soccer fans. It will continue

Dont want to go early on this but N.Jones is going to go down as one of the MFC's all time greats by the time he's done. Hes flown the flag through one of the most tumultuous times in the Clubs history. Hes shown guts and determination when all around him were flying the white flag. Cant see him retiring without at least 3 B&Fs. Hes gone from a guy who couldnt kick and was a bit self focussed to one of recent memories inspiring Captains. Its a pleasure to watch this career play out, regardless of the results around him. Yes, he didnt have his best game this week but hes a ripper.

Look at the generation that grew up through the mid to late 80s. You will find a large percentage of them are Blues, Bombers and Hawks fans. Nth will have a lot of fans who were in primary school in the late 90s, etc etc You older folk probaly remember all the Demons and Magpies fans in the class room during the early 60s. Forget Casey , just get some decent players and start putting the red and blue back on prime time TV.

Kids affiliation has nothing to do with location of the teams presence. This isnt 1930's suburban melbourne. Its so naive of the powers that be that they think that if Melbourne has a presence in Casey then kids growing up in the area will support the Club. The kids will support the clubs that are successful , on prime time TV with big name stars, when they are 8,9, 10 years old. To think suburban affiliation still exists is so ignorant of the modern footy landscape.

Yep Carey's a pretty good guy. Have met him myself on numerous occasions. No airs and graces. Doesnt consider himself above others .... a bit of a rarity among retired AFL players

If only T.Viney had his say in that decision, things may have been different. Anyway, back to the trough for another go

Such sit back and watch it play out, CBDees.

Who is saying they've escaped the attention of Roos? Who is saying the decision was made by frawley before he was voted in to the leadership group?

oh thats right, its a Jesse Hogan thread. Almost forgot, with all that bulls#$t about Saty

Saty?