Wells 11

Not really.......... but its a relief isnt it? After all the acid in my eyes re Caro etc dont we deserve just a bit of love?. Who knows...he might be right.

Well ...wherever it is, make sure you tell the players.

Tassie wants an 8 game a year side that might not be hawthorn or North. http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-06-26/tassie-wants-one-team-only- Im probably going to get torn down for this but consider this possibility. We play 8 home games in Tassie and perhaps retain 6 home games at the G as well, as some kind of benefit. Maybe with other sides home games we end up playing 10 games at the G? We get some dough and probably eventually get successful again which means big crowds at the G and better time slots, ( anyone remember them?) sponsors etc etc etc i just cant see how we're going to thrive ( as opposed to just survive) unless we do something like this. Either this or the AFL builds a boutique stadium somewhere and we get something like Geelongs stadium deal. Which is a bit unlikely. Its true money won't solve all our problems but it would sure take care of a lot of them. I'd rather go 6 - 10 times a year and actually enjoy it ( almost forgotten the feeling) than go more and see more of the way it is right now. Am I being sacreligous?

here's a "what if" scenario... What if they had sacked schwab on the monday after 186 and told Bailey he had until the end of the year. We played Carlton next who had called us " bruise free" in the previous encounter, and we still were an outside chance of playing finals. What if the paleysr had regrouped hard and we'd won that day and went into the final 5 rounds at 9/9. Truth is we did still need to pour millions into the FD and bring in a slew of new fitness coaches etc etc. But how different things may be now if that had come to pass.

Morton Jurrah Scully Watts Gysberts Cook Clarkes foot

deestar....Im officially a fan of yours now. I stayed home...and turned the radio on and off to manage my volitile mood. Dog survived...nothing was broken...think it worked.

nah...they're all happy losing by 100 points every week, getting laughed at in the media and finishing on the bottom. They're close knit ..on purpose...and all hoping to be one club players. Dont mean to be sarcastic but crawf is SO right in this. Without much hope on match day or trust in the coach and his direction how could anyone enjoy playing for us. And I dont care what the players say about Neeld in the media...when you lose by the margins we are, week after week (for the 2nd year in a row), then theres no way players would be filled with the grand vision of the future. Nor should they be. Bush had a grand vision for Iraq too.

I think if we look back with the wsidom of hindsight, it was very much the wrong move wasnt it. But it wasnt just ONE game. Bailey was under fire for the " blow outs" we were suffering ( 50 - 60 point defeats lol) it was said we lacked on field leaders and the all round capacity to respond as a team when the pressure of a game was on. Thomas used to tear into the dees often on FC because of this. . The " bruise free" jibe hurt bailey too. It was felt we lacked guts as a team and that Bailey had made them soft. 186 was just the final proof to people who were waiting for an oppurtunity to knife him. When you consider how undermined and understaffed schwab made Bailey and the FD, and how behind the rest of the league we were falling in fitness standards because of that, Bailey starts to look like a genius now doesnt he. Sacking him that week may have been the worst miscalculation we've made in the 42 years Ive been following the club .

I think you're gonna find that ANY side that gets a compo pick is going to have made a lot of dumb decisions over a long time. Thats why its there ......to help rescue sides that go swimming outside the flags and caught in the rip. Sure it will bring ridicule but who cares ...we're getting it 24/7 anyway. Once we start winning IF we ever do again, someone else will be in the spotlight.

u talking half time or full time?

Hey...Dont feel bad. We believe what we need to believe to keep hoping dont we. I was somewhere along there with you. I didnt like the way the players got spoken of and treated post Bailey, I didnt like the way Schwab remained while Bailey got shafted....but I also trusted that SOMEONE in there must know what they're doing. I loved Jimmy and Gary Lyon. Craig seemed so knowledgabe etc etc. Grant Thomas said that Neeld had lost the players before round ONE last year. I , probably like you, didnt want to hear. Looks like he was right . We killed one phase of our history by not giving Bailey any power or resources and killed another by giving the WRONG guy too much.

Its an interesting thought isnt it. I wonder if someone like Eade would take it on, on a wait and see at the end of theseason basis? I doubt it as he has commitments now at CFC. Mind you we do have Craig right there and if we needed an older wise head then who better than him. We need a stable figure now.....right NOW

Wake me up when the number 1 and 2 draft picks arrive Wake me up when we get more than 50 games into Morton and Bennell and all the young guys Wake me up when we play Carlton again after the "bruise free" insult Wake me up when Viney arrives Wake me up when Neeld is sacked..... I think im in some bad recurring nightmare......... and Im never going to wake up!

its past time

Well...if you're saying that since the Essendon game last year this one is the next best performance then that alone doesnt give me a great deal of confidence rpfc. Thats a long time between drinks.... and we still lost to team ranked somewhere between 6 and 11 by 6 goals where they had almost twice the number of scoring shots. I agree it looked better but thats partly because of how bad its been Getting rid of Neeld may not make us suddenly win but Im struggling to imagine how it could possibly make us any worse.

I share this conflict with you. To be honest I used to hope we lost to get the draft picks ( there was a few of us back then!) but this is SO different. Im concerned about our survival and it feels to me like a slow death is fatal where as a fast fall may lead to a rebound. But who knows anymore. It reminds me of a part of a poem " In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way way was wholly lost...."

I hope your not right re the reference to Fitzroy. The big difference now is that the league needs us in the comp where in Fitzroys case they wanted them to fold. So perhpas theres some things that can yet be done. I tend to agree with some other posters that a change of coach to someone with experience may be the only thing that keeps the players. Apparantly a lot of Essendon players wanted out when knights was coaching his last year too. Also, Can we really say watts hasnt come on because of the QB game. Honestly. We only played him because we wanted a bigger crowd to keep the blockbuster...seemed a fair call at the time. A call a club like ours has HAD to make sometimes.

Well, remember our pre season was filled with the same big red. Sad as it to look back at it now. Even if port doesnt win another game for the season ( which wont happen) they're report card is going to look a WHOLE lot better than ours. Whens the last time we won 3 games in a row? let alone 5.

This is [censored] folks and we shouldnt buy it. Look at port Adelaide last year and this year.....suddenly their terrible list looks a whole lot better doesnt it. Neeld just hasnt built a team that plays for each other and his game style suits a group of players he doesnt actually have = bad coach. If we stay on this route all the good players will leave before that 5 yr timeframe and leave us further up the creek than we already are.....IF thats even possible. Of course he wants a 5 year window...ALL coaches want that. But he's done absolutely NOTHING that says he should get that in my opinion. Change coaches...and get someone experienced, who's got in him to build morale and uses a game plan that vaguely resembles AFL. If I have to put up with 5 YEARS of this Im seriously going to lose whatever flickering interest thats left in me!

I agree, its the BOREDOM aspect thats doing my head in. Even if they're in the game its a horrible game to watch. Our game style is just awful. I find myself disinterested in the footy in general which is a first for me

Gutnick DID stand up to the media Thank you Joe.But when you look at what Pratt did at carlton and compare, its hard for me not to think about what Gutnick DIDNT do. He wanted to own and run the club....Pratt just wanted to support it. Pratt understood you have to play dirty to win this game i.e Judd , Gutnick thought he needed to be nice re telling the league our sins. Had Gutnick stepped in, in the way ONLY HE could have at the time, and helped us into Westpac centre we'd still be hailing him as a hero. He donated big time and once more thank you Jo...but looking at what he gave as a percentage of his wealth, then a lot more have given a lot more and asked for no control over the way the club is run. He was generous big time but demanded too much in return and above all else he missed a golden oppurtunity by playing small when he could have taken us across the divide. Thats how I see him.

Viney came to us as a highly respected football person. Being part of the "old boys club" ...hasnt stopped hird and Thompson being a success at Essendon. We cant condemn him because he was a past star! Neelds trading period was controversial and, as it stands now, a flop. Maybe Viney knew a thing or two and wasnt AFRAID to speak up. Looks to me that most of the levers Neelds been pulling have only been hidden trap doors to the cellar.

Personally I liked the sound of what he was saying. Not the content obviously, but someone saying it as it really is. It felt honest and, for one reason or another, thats been a quality a little lacking in how we've been communicated with as a supporter base lately. We're a team with a really unique set of difficulties. A dwindling, aging supporter base, a home ground being taken over by other super clubs, no physical suburb to locate ourselves in and the type of " spoilt rich boy" image that is easy to degrade and mock. Thats just OUTSIDE the football arena itself. A whole other set of disastrous issues onfield. In that sense we, more than any other club, needs AFL assistance. We're in trouble up to our necks and at another point in time we'd have been closed down or relocated. So, Im glad Jacksons there and if we can start to pull the AFL in on our side and recognise the depth of issues we ARE actually facing in an uber proffessional era. Maybe instead of sending attack dogs like Anderson on us they could actually HELP us.

Neelds job is to get the team to gel, play with passion and follow a good game plan. I dont see he's been able to do any of that...so why on earth would be we extending his contract? " growing a pair" doesnt mean sticking tight to a bad decision. Leave it til at least mid season but after that...every 100 point plus loss could and SHOULD bring with it the threat of execution. Comparisons to Hardwick dont hold. His team was united at the end of his first season despite being in a hole at the start of it. Our hole is getting deeper into his 2nd year. Something is wrong folks....but Im not the only one saying that am I.

Good post. In retrospect it was stupid. BUT...please remember that at the time Jimmy was getting people to to donate to get us out of BIG debt. The talk at the time was that that QB game was going to be taken from us if we didnt get x amount of people. It was a desperate decision, made at a desperate time, by people with the survival of the club in mind. Its true it wasnt a "purely football" decision but we havent been in the position to make a lot of those decisions lately have we. We play home games in Darwin for the same reason....we train up there in summer instead of OS at high altitude for the same reasons. We go out to Casey once or twice a week. We played JW early. We're a struggler in this comp doing whatever we can to get a member and a dollar. I wish things were different and that we held jack back and that somehow had made him a star today.... but we played him then because imo we felt we had to. And Im really not sure we can look back and say thats why he hasnt made it yet.