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If posts on this site were required to have citations, there'd only be one or two blokes fit to post anything other than matchday observations.

Given the trajectory of Trent Croad's career after he Lis Franc'd himself, I'd say denying this as a plausible conclusion smacks of rose-coloured glasses, or worse. If I were our list manager, I'd be managing our talls under the assumption that Mitch Clark was never going to play again. To do otherwise, given the previous results in the limited dataset available, would be negligent in the extreme.

Because a captain needs charisma, which Nathan Jones lacks. A captain needs to speak well. Nathan Jones does not. A captain needs to be an attractive billboard for major sponsors. Yeah, nah. Nathan Jones is an excellent player, is a good leader (as you say, mostly by example, which is only one facet of great leadership) and seems to be a good bloke too. He still isn't captaincy material.

Jones is not captaincy material.

I reckon Spencer is unfairly derided on this site, and Neil Craig was effusive in his praise last week so I'm sure he would agree. I can't understand the hate. The bloke puts in 110% every time he takes the field, has good pace, ferocity at the contest, and admittedly average skills. I don't think Jamar will be getting much game time once he and Gawn are both able to run out a game, especially if Mitch and Fitz are also on the park. We could conceivably field a team with three or four ruckmen/forwards/defenders if we could balance the midfield. We certainly have the potential to play an exceptionally tall team if we can create a strategy that allows it to work.

If one wishes to play the Game of Thrones...

There is, and it indicates that you don't know how to identify an apple tree before it bears fruit. Look, I understand your frustration, but it's clear from this post that you have no idea what the problem is, or how to solve it. You're not alone on that, mind you, probably 99% of the posters on this forum don't know either, but your entire opinion seems to based on the premise that "We currently suck. Therefore everyone currently doing anything must suck". I'll note publicly that Nathan Jones is now officially a Captain, with absolutely no discernible improvement in results. Where are all the posters that were saying he should definitely be the Captain now? Where are the results they promised? I'll tell you where they are, if there are any... they're two or three years away. Just like any improvement that Neeld might bring to the table would be. We have no idea if he is the coach to lead us through these dark times, because we know nothing about what's happening at the club. All we know is, we've got a tree with no fruit.

Watts is a trade for me.

Macdonald may not have touched it much, but he certainly did a good job keeping Mitchell quiet.

The reigning premiers have multiple captains. In your view, is their leadership structure "not working"?

Geelong's conversion is good, I believe, because they only want one kind of centre clearance - the decisive one where the player breaks free and delivers a quality attacking ball, not just a Beamer-bomb. Geelong play clearances with a setup designed to take a decisive possession, if they can't secure it, they're happy to let the other team make a pressured forward fifty entry, which they're confident of being able to intercept and counter-attack. You'll often see Selwood or Johnson hit the congestion at a full sprint heading forward, hoping to have the ball land in their lap. If they get it, they're gone and a quality attacking thrust is built. If they miss, they don't care, so long as the opposition's clearance is well-pressured so that the attacking ball isn't a clean pass.

Geelong have recognized that defending forward thrusts has become pretty easy, both for them, and their opposition. Now that everyone on the ground is fit enough to treat the field like a basketball court, whoever is in attack presses forward. When this trend first occurred, the magpies and west coast dominated, by keeping the ball in their forward half and peppering the goals with enough scoring shots that they were sure to win. After a year or two of the forward press, teams learned that they needed to defend space in ther backline, rather than manning up individual players. This ensured that no player ever found enough space with the ball in hand to get a clean shot away. The ball might stay pressed into the forward line, but it scored a lot less often. Then, when the turnover inevitably occurred, the defending team suddenly scored on the counterattack because their forward line has space. Geelong are, I believe, deliberately conceding clearances to put the opposition into their "attack" structure. You will have heard coaches talk about teaching players what to do in three phases of the game. Attack, defense, and in-dispute. Players have different instructions for each phase. So Geelong deliberately concede the clearance to set the opposition into their attack structure. This sees them pressing forward, and setting a perimeter arc 15-20 metres back from the 50. Geelong then back the likes of Mackie, lonergan, Taylor and bartel to intercept mark the ball and immediately pump it long into the corridor. Tomahawk is 10 metres to the defensive side of the centre circle, and he is the default target. Motlop, Christensen, Stokes and Varcoe then use their speed to burn their opponents on the counter-attack, run onto the long ball from Hawkins who will kick towards goal with barely a look to see who's there, and score in a relatively open forward 50. The reason Collingwood are so good against Geelong is because of the way their backline sets up. They generally leave at least one player (often Marty Clarke) 20m to the defensive side of the entire game which gives them time to get to the clearing Hawkins kick. Also Shaw, Harry O and co are as good at tracking the loose ball as Geelong's speedy forwards, which allows them to curtail the Geelong counter-attack and launch what amounts to a counter-counter-attack of their own, when Geelong's defensive zone is compromised by the players switching to their 'attack' structure. I love watching those two teams play each other.

Hush hush? How do you hide a couple of million dollars in the publicly available balance sheet?

1. Spend however much is required to secure Daisy Thomas. 2. Trade Jack Watts for Armfield (what a runner!) or Robinson (plays to get bruised) and steak knives. Spend steak knives on speculative VFL midfielder. 3. Trade Frawley for Prestia and fringe midfield talent from GCS. They have to slim their list by 6, so you could potentially ask for two or three at once. 4. Trade pick two in a package that nets a reliable 25yo midfielder and steak knives - either another decent midfielder or a downgraded pick for use on speculative VFL talent. That should see the influx of 7-9 midfielders, aged 21 or above, ready to play footy. We won't miss Watts at all, and Frawley is going to be leaving for free next year regardless, so it makes sense to sell him while we're still holding the cards.

The point is that white, anglo-saxon christian-derived men should really keep their traps shut when complaining about people who are trying to fight prejudice and oppression.

Carlton have midfielders coming out of their ears. Lets trade Watts for one (or two) of them, I'd be rapt. Obviously we're not going to get Murphy, Judd, Gibbs, or Brick, but I'd take the pace of Armfield, the ferocity of Robinson any day. In fact, let's bundle up Watts and a late pick and have both of them. At least they influence the contest and do the team things.

I would be absolutely RAPT to trade Watts in on a good midfielder. His pea-sized heart makes me ever so angry every time I watch him play. (Not saying he won't end up a good footballer, but I think the number one thing we need right now is heart, and he has none of it. I would trade him - and it pains me to say it - for Mitch Robinson).

The inefficiency of our kickouts is not the fault of the guy in the goal square. It's the fault of the 7-8 blokes who are supposed to be running to create space.

I disagree with more than half of those.

For the rest of you, I'd just like to point out that Daisy is a jet. If the AFL was contested by women, she'd be on a million a year. She's the gun mid that every team wishes they had.

Dear "half the people on this board". You're self-centred, rude, misogynist wankers with one eye and no brains. I hate reading your posts.

The players admitting that they're not playing well enough is "fluff"? If you're sick of hearing the truth, then stop reading the paper and the forums. What do you want to hear? Lies about them all being injured or something? It's pretty straightforward - they're not playing well enough. Dawes admitted it. Garland admitted it, all the poor sods asked to be captain have admitted it. It's not fluff, it's a pretty obvious fact.

It seems to me that the main criticism levelled at Caro is that she uses phrases like "sources say", or "people close to the club have said". Then everyone whinges that we don't know if she's making it up, because we don't know the veracity of the source. Unfortunately for the Caro haters, that doesn't make her a bad journalist. This is a very clear case of "don't hate the player, hate the game". You think the Watergate scandal would have played out the same way had Woodward and Bernstein named Deep Throat by his actual name? Clearly not, and the same applies with those at Melbourne (or any club) that supply Caro with information. If she names them, they get the sack and she loses her source, so clearly she's not going to name names. Unfortunately, whether you like the way she delivers the information or not, reality has vindicated her position on the Dees. We're a total basketcase from top to bottom, and the leadership she was so critical of appear to be absolutely deserving of all the criticism they got. Perhaps she's actually done us a favour in helping to rattle the rotten apples from the tree, have you considered that?

Mark Thompson, 2006. After SIX YEARS in charge of his team, they miss the finals and suffer losses of 52, 102, 92, and 61 points (the latter at the hands of the lowly Hawks, no less!). I imagine you blokes - had you been Cats supporters - would have been highly vocal in your support of him, given your surety that he was on the cusp of building the greatest team of the modern era. Oh wait.

Well, I don't know why I'm going to bother amongst the maelstrom of impatient knobjockeys whose response to any crisis is to sack anyone whose name they can think of, but I'm just going to mention that I thought Matt Jones was excellent today, that Terlich will be a great player once he calms down a little and cleans up his decision making, and that all of the blokes on here criticising whoever they can think of will be making post in two years time about how "they always knew" that Bail and Evans were going to be gun players and that they "always had faith". Anyway... carry on.