Bergly Sanders

Yes, they look a lot more "gaelic" than today's skills. The handball looks straight out of hurling!

I'd much rather a song that talks symbolically about the supporters' devotion to the Red and the Blue, a symbol which has been associated with the club far longer than our monkier, than one which talks about how we can kick heaps of goals and we are the best at playing the game, as other team songs do (e.g. Collingwood, Brisbane, Geelong, etc.)...

I don't mind the idea too much. I thought there might have been a problem with teams being unable to sneak into the 8 in the final five rounds from the bottom group (at best, 13th). Pretty hard to imagine it happening, though (ah, the good ol' mathematical possibility; which obviously isn't weighted according to probability...). Ideally, the fairest fixture for both the teams and the players' wellbeing would be playing each team once, and alternating home and away games every second year with each team. Don't know if R Murdoch's mob will like that, though!

Genuine question: who are the coachkillers? Can you list some, and why? Not just the poor players who try hard (Spencer?), but coachkillers.

Nobody counts the good calls, do they? "Where the umpire set the mark, that was spot on." "The umpire made a really good decision when they didn't call high on that, because that guy was obviously staging." How many times do they get this stuff right in a match, only to be said to LOSE MY TEAM THE GAME when they make one controversial call? Just think about it. The umpire's paralax is different to the TV cameras, both of which are different to that of individual members of the crowd. If they miss someone dragging it in, because it's on the other side of the body, but the audience can see it, it's a bad call. If they call it because they can see it and the crowd can't, it's THE WORST CALL EVER THEY'RE OUT TO GET MY TEAM. Not saying they don't make mistakes, of course they do. As others have said here, it doesn't help that they're told what to focus on, and given new interpretations of new rules to implement on a weekly basis. Those complaining of chainging the aestethic of the game through interpretation: aesthetic changes are codified into rules anyhow (e.g.: not having 30 players on each team leads to a much more fluid game). Anyway, if you found data (somehow) of correct vs incorrect calls (as reviewed by the umpires post match---which they do, of course), my guess is that the former would far outweight the latter...

Assistant coaches at a club also coach at that club...

A lot of people seem to wish to avoid assistant coaches, and go for tried and tested. Tried and tested coaches are hard enough to come by as it is, let alone good ones. The recruits Roos has brought in have, in the space of just over half of a season of football justified their pay, and my membership fee. The same can be said for few (any?) of the recruits brought in three years ago under previous regimes. The man is no fool; and if he reckons someone like Ling is the man for the job, we can only trust him, even if Ling's credential list for coaching is nonexistent. On somewhat of a tangent, it's interesting to sit back and watch Malthouse's decline (not without some pleasure...), given how highly-rated assistants of his went. These men (thinking of Neeld and the former Saints' coach, whose name escapes me) were leaders in their field, coming from what was considered the best coaching school in the sport. Of course, it wasn't entirely their fault---they had to work with teams unused to a winning culture---but they failed, completely and utterly. They were well-trained---but in a style of football which is almost antiquated. And we see the same with Malthouse now. I suppose what I'm getting at is that, no matter how good your schooling, if you've learned everything you know in Latin, your knowledge is only going to tak you so far. Better to have someone schooled in modern football who is untested, than someone who has been an assistant for years and years in a team whose game style is prewar. (I'll not even mention Sheedy).

Jamar was also excellent, I thought. Getting his tap back, not tapping it to his own boots.

I maligned him a couple of weeks ago, so today I've gotta hand it to him. He played superbly. When we started improving, I lamented that we couldn't "just finished the job" because of our lack of players who can just grab the game by the throat and lift the team. Looks like we've had them all along, though they've been hiding...

I agree. It's becoming more and more a game of zones, rather than a directly attacking game. If you can hold that zone, and make sure they can only run backwards with any sort of confidence, it's far more valuable than attacking yourself, which puts the risk on you, rather than them. Playing to probabilities. I expect we'll see more of this kind of play in the future. I already feel like we're going that way under Roosie. The constant handballing he's got our players doing is to nullify any direct attacks. The more players around the ball, the better you control that zone, and a zone can be dominated further down the field with a few players. If you can do this handballing ring-around-the-rosie correctly, you should draw in more players and give less the chance to quickly dash up forward... You see similar moves in Gaelic football, which, for an absence of tackling, relies entirely on zone play. Very exciting to watch! edit: fixed some spelling

This sums up my feeling exactly. It's a real pity, especially after he played an excellent game earlier in the season. It seems to me that he was shaken up by the solid bodies of the Sydney players. There was one point where he had a gap straight through two Sydney players, and he could have charged through---he's not a small bloke, and not a slow one either---but he just looked lost, and handballed it to a man under the pump. More and more, I realise he's a player who just doesn't want to put his body on the line. We don't need a team full of Nate Joneses, but the players who make me really confident for the future---the likes of Dawes, Kennedy-Harris, Viney, even Salem(!)---will go for the ball, rather than incessantly hanging back, even if they aren't the biggest blokes on the team (K-H, Viney, etc.). The frustration of Watts is that he's got more than most physically, but his willingness to play is ... just ...

Fine writing. I've not read much of his, but I'll keep an eye out. His clever way of weaving a story is anathema to the shouty, stubby, formulaic hackery of C Wilson and D Barett et al. As someone who writes for a living, this has made me extremely glad.

Didn't see the game today, only the scoreline. Nice to hear that others here think it didn't really reflect the effort, stats, etc. It seems after two games (hardly enough of a sample size to base anything off) that we've just moved a problem from the midfield to the forward line. This massively compounds the difficult conditions on the players; they can't just bomb it forward or whatever, but have to use their skills (which are poor) when moving forward. Hopefully the injection of some talls will help. I wonder if a ruckman will be on the radar in the trade period (haha, only Melbourne supporters talk about trade period in round 2!), an experienced old hand who can just jump in and rotate with the developing ruckmen. If we had more decent forwards all over the ground (and we do, but they're not playing), we wouldn't lose by so much. . .

About the same chance as Hawthorn have of becoming the Tasmanian Hawks...? We're playing up there to secure more and continued funding from Tourism NT, not to move up there. That's just foolish. Any venture that would see more than 3 games played in the top end will be a disaster for players' health, and the other clubs won't stand for it, even if Melbourne were to fold. The fact that temperature will increase in the next century won't make it any more viable...

We're still talking about THIS guy? Never mind his poor fact-checking, or his grandiose predictions that invariably never come to pass. Never mind his whiny sanctimonious vitriol against what are, in essence, entertainers, writing and condemning as if he were investigating corruption in the highest echelons of the government. He once started an article with the following sentence: "THEY do a lot of things wrong in the United States, but they do a lot of things right, too." There has probably never been a worse sentence written by someone paid to be a writer. It's just an inflated way of saying, "They do things in the US." I've got this wonderful image of him sweating over how to begin the thing, writing that, and kicking back in his chair, feet on the desk, "nailed it". Don't get hot under the collar about this guy; he's got about as much knowledge about writing---and about Australian football---as the poet William McGonagall, but he's far less entertaining.

I was there last night, so I'm not really sure how it was presented on TV---what narative was spun by the commentators---but I can say, at least for my part, that the match was a positive experience. We used the ball well for most of the match, EXCEPT in front of goal, which ultimately cost us the game, in my opinion. We showed some real heart for a lot of the match---the number of spot fires on the field was more than I've seen at any other match, and this, I'm guessing, wouldn't have been represented on TV: for a team that is considered to be lacking passion, there were a few punches thrown and blokes backing up their teammates (even the much maligned J Watts had a dig). I left the match ultimately hopeful. I remember saying a couple of years ago (2011 I think) that Jack Watts' errors aren't thinking errors, but silly skill errors caused by lack of confidence. This, I believe, is what really undoes our team: the lack of confidence of the players in their own abilities, and that of their teammates. People are unwilling to, for example, run the ball themselves, but instead kick it to a 2/1 or 3/1 contest to our disadvantage. There are numerous occasions last night where players, finding themselves with the ball, handballed it to another teammate as under the pump as them. I believe that we have a skilled team, but one that is too afraid to put those skills into practice. I said that I was hopeful, and there are two reasons for this. First, players like Terlich, Kent, Clisby, Davis (who player rather well for his first), who have few games between them, aren't the most skilled players (at the moment!), but their passion and commitment to the team, I believe, far outweighs that of more senior players. Sure, they make stupid errors, but the astonishing thing in the context of this team at this time is that they don't drop their heads, they just keep chasing the ball, at the very least, not gifting it to the other team without effort. This attitude in the young players is what needs to be fostered by the next coach, and I believe that if it is, we will see a vast improvement in a very short space of time. Second, being a QLD demon, I don't often see other Melbourne supporters. Last night was a positive experience from that standpoint. That the Melbourne faithful would turn up this deep into what many are calling the worst season of all time, and yell passionately, is a testament to this club's supporter base. The GC supporters clearly far outweighed us, but we were, for the most part, just as loud, just as belligerent, just as passionate in our small numbers as they were en masse.

Couldn't agree more. The psychological problem of the team was evident a few times this year when, at times in matches when we had to back ourselves and dig in, one event would occur which would lead to the team losing confidence, and letting the game slip. A particular example I can think of was during a match (unfortunately, I can't remember who the other team was; but I have a feeling it could have been the Lions), the ball was contested near our goal, and a player from the oposition got it. Fitzpatrick (who I really quite like, except for this) was in a position to dive into a tackle, but stood and watched as the other player kicked a goal. It wasn't a matter of five seconds, of course; but certainly enough time to read what was going to happen, and act accordingly. After that goal, we were never really in it, despite being in it for pretty much the whole match up until this point. There are stories of Sydney being forty points ahead, and still being desperate for the next goal. We need that kind of optimisim and belief. It's not really about "wanting it" (I don't think footballers really ever want to lose), but believing it; and we need a coach who can fill us with confidence, and not try to beat it into us. When we have that, we'll be a much more successful team.

Whilst these stats look damning, don't be too taken in. A sample size of 22 matches (for DB) compared to one that is 7 matches (for MN) won't give you fair statistics: the larger the sample size, the more reliable the results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers). Because MN's sample size is so small, we can't really trust those stats when comparing to DB's, even when looking at averages, and even when looking for trends. Can anyone post the same stats for the 2012 season, so we can have a fair comparison?

To continue the nostalgiafest, here are three matches in full: vs Geelong, Round 20, 2005 vs St Kilda, Elimination Final, 2006 and let's not forget recent history ... vs Essendon, Round 10, 2012 It's worth checking out the youtube account MelbourneDemonsFooty: this guy uploads heaps!

Here's an interview with Mitch: http://www.melbournefc.com.au/video/2013-04-30/mitch-clark-exclusive-interview

While he's out we can work on mids' delivery to the forward line, so we can reward his perseverance upon his return with the ball delivered on a silver platter after every clearance... Good luck Mitch, hang in there.

"Melbourne forward Mitch Clark will undergo minor surgery on his right foot, and will miss the next 6-8 weeks of football." MITCH CLARK TO MISS UP TO TWO MONTHS Definitely not the best news! Mitch Clark (foot) 6-8 weeks Mitch Clisby (shin) test Jesse Hogan (corked thigh) test James Sellar (ill) test

And you thought the loss to Essendon was rock bottom!

Eh, sports journalists. They need to justify their salaries somehow; you never see a live cross to Damian Barrett huddling in a bombed out husk of an office building in Damascus, wearing a bullet-proof vest, dodging bullet fire. Critique always seems more intelligent and more astute than saying, "They did what they needed for their club," which is what I believe they did. Their comments just sound like bad philosophy, like stoners talking about capitalism man, and how the man's keeping them down man, while sitting in front of their wall-to-wall television . . .

In this thread: sentiments from the end of 2011.