Diamond_Jim

There were also zones within the city of Melbourne itself. They originally came into force in 1916 and remained until at least the sixties. The country was however a free for all until the mid sixties. "The VFL’s response was to zone rural Victoria and the Riverina of New South Wales in a similar manner to metropolitan Melbourne. Because of the sparseness of Australia’s rural population, the country zones related not to the player’s address, but rather to the league in which he played. This difference made zone boundaries effectively impossible to adjust, and was a critical component of the failure of country zoning. The VFL was aware that discrepancies existed in the strength of each zone, and it was originally planned that the zones would be rotated every year so that each club would obtain a chance of receiving the best young country players. However,Carlton and Hawthorn lodged complaints with the VFL, as they had productive zones and were naturally unwilling to give them up for less productive ones,[1] so the zones remained the same from the inception of country zoning until it was abolished in 1986. There was also no provision for demographic changes which occurred in the various country zones, which exacerbated the problems mentioned above." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_(Australian_rules_football)

disappointing but no panic stations... just the usual MFCSS resignation

So given the number of bush fire charities... some National, some State based.... is there any word on how the proceeds will be divided.

would we now be third or fourth division?

On that basis you would say that North is a largely successful team and yet they may well soon be fighting for their very existence if and when we move to odd team numbers with a Tasmanian based team.

depends which season you see as the aberration.. 2018 (the last six odd weeks) or 2019 (a bad version of 2017). If it's the former you would expect to see us splitting our win loss ratio with the top 8 and beating the bottom four convincingly. With a modicum of luck that is top 4. If 2017/2019 is a better measure then top 8 is stretch. The list will not get much better. Our "golden youngsters" of Oliver Petracca and Brayshaw should be hitting top form and Gawn is still going well. The older brigade of May, Hibberd, Jetta will to varying degrees decline as Jones has. Not much coming through unless you count last year's draft and we sold off our 2020 first round pick. After a lacklustre finals series the jury is out on Tomlinson but with Langdon they might provide a better balance to our goal leaking gameplan. Would feel a lot more confident if we had a fit Hogan in the side but no such luck. We should not miss Lewis but we will. Sadly I think we scrape into the top 8 and meander along in the river of irrelevancy that seems to be the inevitable fate of the MFC. Would be nice to be wrong. Like you I wouldn't mind a premiership or two.

and that's why some balanced negativity on this forum is great to read. Not as though we get much press coverage anyway.

sorry... you may well be right. The Casey Demons VFLW side train there but I am not sure about the MFC AFLW team. The info on the net had pictures of them training at Gosch's Paddock but that may have been a one off.

but we don't use them other than the occasional visit. Even the listed MFC players who make up half the Casey team train at Gosch's paddock.

A common line through this thread seems to be that the list which Northey had was not as good as that enjoyed by Daniher. With this I tend to agree. On the Goodwin note I think short of a figurehead full forward (Neitz) the present list largely rivals that which Daniher had. He has it all ahead of him in the next six to twelve months. The measure of a good coach is of course to get more out of the combined unit than each individual could contribute if acting alone. Northey certainly did that...

the local problems won't do us any good as I expect the council's longer term major expenditure plans are on hold. You would expect that there will be a major turnover of the councillors at the next election together with changes at its executive level. It's also not good for the MFC brand but I think most people will be able to disassociate our connection from the alleged shortcomings of the councillors. Unless we are dragged in by some media revelation or the like I suspect few people would know or care about our Casey presence. At a more practical level I am more interested in whether they have fixed the drainage on the oval. For half of the oval you literally sank through the surface as you walked across it. A local told me that the rumor was that the contractor never connected the underground arena drainage to the outside pipes. Apocryphal perhaps. Overall it is an excellent sporting complex (or could be) with pools , athletic tracks etc etc... but it is a loooooong way from the CBD.

They effectively killed the AFLX format last year with the ridiculous format and promo style. A pity because as you say a cause like this could have been an excellent opportunity to promote and legitimize the format in the minds of the public.

Suppose the measure for powerhouses then and now are different. Attendance wise we were ahead by miles simply because we had the MCG. Supporters of opponent teams pencilled in their MCG match simply because it was their one day of "comfort" in watching the football. Moneywise the teams were still relative amateurs I assume with the weekly pay be a few pounds at most. Training was twice a week after work etc. You didn't need big money to run a footy club perhaps. And of course at the time we were a subset of the MCC who probably controlled our purse-strings. And then we get to the big question.. geography... up until some point a teams following was largely determined by which suburb you lived in. Controlling got the northern suburbs. Carlton won the immigrants etc. Did Melbourne benefit or did we just get the male children of the silvertails who registered their kids for school and clubs at birth. Stereotype perhaps but there is a shred of truth. So I suppose we were a powerhouse in an era when perhaps it didn't matter as much.

Can't recall 1998 but definitely 1990 was anyone's.

The Northey era was probably the more enjoyable. I will never forget the open door policy to the change rooms that allowed you to go along and listen to Swoop rouse the players. The first two 87 finals and the unforgettable prelim at Waverley can never be forgotten. Daniher's era suffered from the up down form of the team. Just our luck to come up against the most successful one year team in Essendon in 2000. Many here blame Daniher for the subsequent collapse that we are really yet to emerge from as a club. Harsh.. maybe... but he did provide some great years unlike after he left.

crossing to Jimmy in the rooms... Are you there Jimmy.... are you there Yeah Harry but they locked me in the toilet ............

Good point....North are a conundrum and a big warning lesson for MFC. They have had reasonable success for a long time but have been unable to turn that success into a real boost in supporters. Probably only Hawthorn have been successful in coming from a low base to a power club and they have had incredible on field success. MFC on the other hand have gone from one of the two or three power clubs of the 50's and early 60's to the bottom four (North Bulldogs Saints and us). Not sure we can turn the ship around but a few successful seasons would certainly help paper over the cracks for a lot of us ageing supporters.

Probably right but we really sunk ourselves imo when Richmond and then others became co mcg tenants. Our point of difference was lost and combined with abysmal on field performance we have continued downwards ever since. It'll take more than a change of captain to turn around 50 odd years of comparative failure. I'd start with trialling free entry for our matches against the lesser interstate sides.. Suns etc when played at the MCG. Most of the attendees at present are members anyway so the revenue loss may not be that great compared to the awareness boost.

saw that article... very disappointing and doubly disappointing that they are targeting the western suburbs.. enough almost to make me follow the Rabbitohs

I think we will look back on Gawn's career and say the team didn't really make use of his dominance. Recently I have been asking myself who was the more influential ruckman.. Max or Jeff White... Jeff at his peak rucked superbly, acted as the linkman when the ball was bought into the corridor and could take a wonderful high pack mark up forward. White's tactic f belting the ball forward from the centre bounce was often referred to as being as good as a kick. Okay zoning etc may have made that more difficult but I cannot think of many occasions when's Gawn's dominance has been used in a planned way.

by my quick calculation it was 74 wins for the decade ... take out 2017 and 2018 and.... well you don't want to know PS.. we won 72 games during the '70's so perhaps we are on the way up

Hi realise this should be on the cricket board but I was hoping for a wider readership. I'm an AFL member and used to go the cricket using the AFL reserve but haven't been for several years. Thinking of going on days 2 and 3 of the boxing day test. What's the position with just turning up as the reserved seats they are offering don't thrill me. At ticketek it says general admission category exhausted for the AFL reserve but I doubt it. I like to move in and out of the sun as the day progresses so a fixed seat is not my normal go. Many thanks

the Victorian government pay the Bulldogs to play twice a year at Ballarat where the capacity is 10k at most so there are deals to be had. Albury/Wodonga could be a possible place for us to play GWS if the money was right. Similarly Mildura against Port. On the use of Kardinia Park the deal would depend on both what the Ownership Trust could pay and what if any exclusivity rights Geelong have with the Trust. Geelong are certainly getting a good deal with a "clean" boutique stadium for their sole use largely funded by taxpayer money.

Interesting take on gambling. If you think about it a little the AFL are far more complicit in promoting gambling than cricket ever were with alcohol and tobacco. In the case of cricket they were "merely" promoting an evil to an existing market. In the case of the AFL they have been complicit in introducing gambling to people who would never have touched the traditional gambling routes of casinos, horses etc. They have taken a community sport and massively promoted it as a gambling tool. For the AFL to simply say that gambling is legal is too cute by far.

Interesting question and you need to do the sums. I suspect Kardinia Park would not work for us simply because of the geographical location of our supporter base. Casey would require massive investment to bring it to say a 20,000 seat stadium and that investment could not be justified for only 3-4 games. The other issue would be that Geelong (or more correctly the Ground Trust) as the owner would presumably want some form of ground rent that would defeat the purpose somewhat. A club that it might work for is Footscray. They could lobby the Governments who are funding the development that they should get co- tenancy for say 4 games. Their supporter base is growing in the Point Cook/Werribee area which is easy access to Geelong. In these days of electronic signage game day advertisments and stadium fit out are more easily changed and things like pouring rights and super boxes can be pro rated or the like. In the US many of the team relocations that we have seen over the years are teams moving to new cities who will provide a stadium effectively free of charge to the incoming team. As an aside if the AFL decide to "upgrade" Docklands where will the games be played that year. I'm no engineer but I would be surprised if you could easily update Docklands in a piecemeal manner like they did with the MCG.