Fitz Fitzpatrick

if you want to start looking ar clips of footy when it was at its best look at footy in the late 90s early 2000s. instead of a cap on interchange put a minimum time that players have to be off if they come off the ground. eg 10 or 15 min, bring the rotations back to 20 or 30. gee it was an exciting game then. positional play, not rolling mauls where a quick kick out the back gows to no one because the fwd line are in the defensive 50. every NON footy fan that iknow tells me its gone to [censored] compared to how it used to be. hence why rugby league has overtaken it as the most popular code in australia. only the die hards still insist its a pleasure to watch.

Shattering news and only confirms in my mind what I feel will end up happening. He couldve been an absolute gun. So many pundits have forgotten just how good he was in '12. he really took some games by the scruff of the neck. To think we may never have that tandem of him and Hogan in the fwd 50 is gut wrenching. But you have to feel for Mitch. He must be as low as can be about the whole thing. Completely frustrated.

Sorry BH, didnt want to put a downer on your morning. The writing on the wall just seems so painfully obvious to me. The Club has its reasons for spin and with holding info on the situation and perhaps they dont even know at this stage. a bit frustrating however. Anyway, bring on the Saints!

Its not the lack of on field success that makes it hard for supporters to stay 'thick', its the pathetic, almost slap-stick management of the club in the recent past that frustrates people the most. I guess it can be hard to 'love' a Club that runs like a Benny Hill skit. Ill never stop following the Club but as an entity it is a rather pathetic organisation. Perhaps it has reached its nadir - we will see.

Mitch is gone. the writing is on the wall now guys. i was really optimistic until 3 weeks ago. Im reading between the lined and the font is bold. I expect a mid season retirement announcement ' due to ongoing issues with injury'

No [censored] its harder on the body, soccer is such a Pu$%y's game.

reality set in for me today regarding this issue. I support a Club which is destined to be a lower tier feeder club stuck in a cycle between mediocrity and rebuild. The reality that a third of the league in this great game that I consider the best sport in the world , is also destined to be stuck in this cycle. Even if MFC scrambles to the top for a premiership which we all would love, thats not enough. I need to see the club, and ALL clubs, having the opportunity to chase eternal success. Not a fleeting few years of finals before plummeting to the bottom again and being raped of key players by the big clubs who will continue to rebuild and top up. More galling than this reality of MFCs future is the sad reality that the game I love is reduced to a English Premiership style league, the type that I used to be always proud that the AFL was nothing like. A few teams constantly enjoying success while the others make up the numbers to fill the fixture. Have no doubt guys, our great game is very very sick at the moment but unfortunately the symptoms are yet to fully appear and it seems will take most by suprise. The writing is on the wall for the Melbournes, St kildas NM, footscrays etc. Yes perhaps the odd 2 or 3 years in the finals every decade or so is still possible for all but I assure you , solid sustained success and growth of these small clubs is no longer a possibility. We will spend the rest of our football following years hoping the 'house of cards' doesnt fall in while fruitlessly hoping the next messiah can convince our stars to stay while we rebuild. FAAAAARRRRKKK

And they dont get to play in successful teams. FA has inadvertantly created a system where more than half the leagues players will never have the opportunity to taste the ultimate success, while the games stars reap the rewards.

What the Fark is Pedersen even doing on an AFL list. We keep talking about him like its worth something to name him. It shits me that the club still has to pay him and Byrnes

It is really such a long long road back when a club allows itself to fall away so badly as it has done. To get continuity and momentum and leadership and professionalism back in to an organisation that has become so shite really is a mammoth task. Then to lose all the key forwards. MFC situation can be likened to a cycle of poverty . So hard to break. It wont matter how many good draft picks it gets - the place has been robbed of any leadership and culture to an extent that any decent kid entering the system just cant bridge the gap as they just dont have any exposure to what makes good juniors good AFL players. The club is in a death spiral and has been for 45 years. It was accelerated the last 7 years but the issues now are the fruits of decades past. How do you pull an organisation out of this kind of tail spin? It can but its going to be a 15 to 20 year process. At least. the lost generationS of supporters will take years to catch up on. I wonder how many kids in any given class room in the early 60s were Demons supporter? Im sure there were plenty. Now, the poor fellas are probaly get bashed behind the sports sheds for bringing their Jack Watts signed footy to school. How was it allowed to disappear? How was one of the giants of the competition allowed to fritter away that support and success? Its a [censored] disgrace and the administrators involved should be ashamed of what they allowed to happen. Schwab was a cancer to the club however its too simplistic to blame this on him solely. This problem was 40 years old before he turned up the second time. He set the club back massively I agree and 2014 is , at best, 2009 again. At best. this is march 2009 for the MFC. With half a list of C graders, a few young kids with talent and some young players who will carve out sub par careers with the club, failing to meet expectations. We are kidding ourselves if we think Paul Roos is going to turn this around. Anything other than multi decade sustained respectability and success will do nothing other than paper over the cracks. The club is in a death spiral, with Roos coming in and pulling back on the stick for a couple of years .

Re-signing Jack Watts will turn out to be a bad move I believe ( hes just not a footballer), and I think its fair to say so was drafting Toumpas. At the time every club wouldve taken him at pick 4. Melbourne was not alone in their high opinion of him. It turns out every club was wrong on that one. Its just that MFC is left holding the baby and P.A. 'accidentally' ended up with a Gun. Drafting is an inexact science. Its clear that Toumpas will be more Grgic than Hodge but whats done is done. perhaps a late pick like JKH or Hunt may make up for it. We will have to wait and see.

Evans is being underestimated here. I believe he has considerable upside should he get a free run from injury. He showed glimpses last year. Im looking forward to seeing him come on under Paul Roos

if it wasnt factual im sure hogan would be on twitter saying so. at least someone from the club. The silence says otherwise

Geelong wont let Melbourne mess around with the footy like Richmond did last week. Tiges went very easy on the Dees. Sorry to say but i think itsl going to be ugly

Until the AFL can solve the problem of crowding around the ball and this rolling scrappy maul that footy has become it will never win over NEW converts to the game. We still love it because we have always loved footy but to the new observer AFL level football now just looks like seagulls fighting over a bag of chips. Reduce rotations back to early 2000's levels (30-40 a game), spread the field out, bring back one on one contests and positional play and only then will there be any chance of converting fans from other codes

I agree. Hopefully from now on first year players wont be relevant to the teams fortunes. Hogan, Salem etc are beginning their apprenticeship. Im much more interested in the fortunes of Watts, Trengove, Fitzpatrick, Strauss, Toumpas, Clisby, Dawes, Clark etc than the "class of 2013". They will get their time but first I want to see what is already on offer.

yep, doesnt get enough touches, fails to influence any game and not up to AFL standard

Haha yes I've stuck my neck out on this one and I won't cut my nose off to spite my face by hoping he fails.. But I'm pretty comfortable with my opinion on this one

Yep, it's getting a bit cringe worthy

I still wish the club traded watts this last trade period, He wasn't worth much then but after its been proven that Paul Roos can't turn this contact shy u-18 basketballer in to an afl player then he's going to be worth a lot less. I just don't rate jack watts. He is a player without a position to call his own. To those who are trying to compare him to the dockers mids purely based on the number written next to 'height' on his drivers license, you guys are deluded. He's not an inside mid's boot lace. Too gangly, shy of contact and VERY easily pushed off the footy. Jack watts is a KPP who just isnt quite good enough for AFL football.

My god, talk about revisionism! Jamar had a fuckenn lousy season, one of the biggest culprits for the below VFL performances earl season and he is finished. Some of you people still swinging your dick about his 2010 season. Get over it. It's done, he's finished. It is naive to believe jamar wasn't up for trade. No bites, not even a nibble. Jamar seems a good bloke maybe even a great club man but this is not 2010. He is with out a doubt one of the biggest spuds on our list. [censored] loads of hit outs, yeah, but right down the oppositions throat. Can't clunk a mark to save himself, though better than pedo, and gets 1 or 2 kicks a game. He's gone!

It was always going to pan out like this . What did you expect?!! This is the very reason the afl dragged their heels on free agency.

The most measured and rational post I've seen here in a while. You hit the nail on the head deetox.

Could someone please explain this to me as it just seems such an obvious solution that I must be missing something. Why doesn't the AFL take ALL the gate receipts for the season and then at the end of the year divide the total by 18? That way clubs are not being financially advantaged/disadvantaged by the draw and the afl can get on with devising a fixture to keep the networks happy. . The good teams will get the big games and the poor teams will have to put up with the lesser time slots until they get better but at least the poorer clubs will not be financially disadvantaged in the meantime. It also removes the constant fix turning debate

i cant believe how many people dont rate Fitzy. hes got massive upside. i believe he could be more important than watts. id like to see him played at CHF. at 200cm, great endurance and speed that is so very rare for someone that size, he could really present as a target across half forward and the wing. set shot kicking action not crash hot but tidy field kicking and decent hands. a definitely must keep. id like to see hogan start at CHB. fitzy isnt a great ruck but could be a lethal CHF. Dawes and Clark in the fwd line.