Lampers

At least with Franklin he was clearly the most marketable player in the competition, and close to the best. You could see the off-field upside of that deal given Sydney market needs something shiny to keep their attention, even if it was clear it would be painful onfield and restrictive to the salary cap as he aged which has proven true. Grundy is a really good player, but he isn’t exciting or marketable, and Collingwood have no need for something shiny. Easy in hindsight to say they should’ve let Grundy go or at least stuck to a more moderate offer and rolled the dice. List management is actually a foresight game, armed with the knowledge of your entire book of contracts plus some pretty informed projections. Collingwood should’ve just said “In hindsight we took some risk and made some assumptions in trying to land a premiership that haven’t panned out. In particular with COVID impacts on salary cap expansion. We need to make some difficult calls now so we don’t breach total player payments rules. We took the approach that best way to correct this disappointing situation while minimising talent loss is to improve our ability to get access to the best 18 year olds through draft picks and put our faith in our recruiting and team and development program.”. That would’ve still been unpopular, but at least to their fans it can be reconciled that the risk was taken to snatch a premiership, plus nobody could predict COVID. What’s more it’s probably true too. Why they had to do this is a disaster. What people seem to miss is once they were in the disaster, what were their options and if they didn’t do those deals, were the alternatives worse? I think they’ve probably done OK given the position they found themselves in, it just doesn’t look like that.

Not being critical, but I dislike the whole “First round pick” thing. As reflected by the points for draft picks, which is not the be all and end all, there is a chasm between a pick 5 and a pick 18. But they are both first rounders. Back to the trade, if Melbourne are backing themselves in to be in finals next year (which they must) and do something with 18 and 19 it looks good. Move up in 2020 with 18 and 19 (or a different later pick) together, or perhaps trade back into 2021 first round with someone Melbourne thinks will drop in 2021 like a Collingwood or maybe a Bulldogs (not sure if they even have their 2021 first).

If Melbourne are only planning to use two picks in 2021 due to reducing list sizes, or a rookie list upgrade, then they’ve moved up 10 spots in 2020 and lost nothing they value doing it (i.e. a 2021 third they weren’t going to use). Assuming Preuss brings in something in the 30s and Hannan similar or maybe 40s, Melbourne are starting to build up a decent set of picks to swap with a club wanting points for NGA or father/son picks for a substantial pick upgrade or maybe a player.

** Sorry, butchered quote from@DeeSpencer about going after Daicos ** I agree. For two reasons, first being he would improve the team on the slim chance it happened. Second is even though I don’t think Daicos is gettable, but going hard at him might raise the contract he signs at Collingwood by 50k or 100k. That puts more pressure on their salary cap and increases the likelihood of someone else shaking loose - whether that’s to Melbourne or not is irrelevant in the end. Collingwood need something to happen early to free up cap space so they can deal with JDG, Moore and Mihocek. If they will lose one of those three unless they can get Grundy or Pendlebury and the like to start accepting lower re-contracts. Hopefully Melbourne can somehow benefit from that early move Collingwood will be looking for.

Wonder no more, I certainly did. I still think there’s sensationalist click baiting going on though.

Why on earth would Melbourne look to trade arguably the highest impact player in the 2020 season? These footy journos are following the US Fox News formula of outrageous comments to generate eyeballs, to generate revenue. It is ramping up out of this world and I suspect it’s because traditional print media has been on life support for years now, and COVID means advertisers are keeping their money too. Anything news.com was already sensationalist and heavily biased, just as other publications have biases, but it’s now on its way to National Enquirer and British tabs levels. “DUSTY TO MARRY ALIEN, REFUSES TO COMMIT FUTURE OFFSPRING TO TIGES!” A waste of time to listen to any of that dross.

The problem with Caro is she always has agendas and takes revenge on anyone critical of her. That’s not journalism. It’s frustrating because she obviously has some good sources but sorting her thin skinned bias vs. fact is hard. I feel she now gets a free ride because she is a woman. Sure, she has had some unfair criticism because she’s a woman and no doubt had some really rough and unfair treatment in her career, but it also gets her protection in this politically correct time. Remember the “holding her under” the water comment and how that was pitched - if anything that was equality as blokey blokes would 100% make that comment about other blokes. Anyway, the biggest problem for mine is her bold faced hypocrisy. Tom Lynch runs about whacking people and acting like a [censored]. Hardwick defends violence in the field. Hardwick says real men don’t cry. Cotchin’s wife acts like a Prima Donna. Two Richmond players get sent home for going to the strippers and breaching COVID rules. Caro. Caro. CARO! Where are you? Best she can come up with was how well Trent did, and how well Dimma and Brendan did, Brooke’s father circuses Richmond - discredit him - and naughty AFL tried to cover up Cotchin’s wife’s idiocy. After all that how can she try to make Richmond look perfect, and even with internal friction everyone Richmond is somehow right? She is hopelessly compromised when it comes to Richmond, and bitter when it comes to some other clubs and people including ours. Doesn’t mean there’s not some truth in what she writes, it’s annoying you have to sort through her opinion lens to try and work out fact from spin. I repeat, this is not journalism.

The one disadvantage of a dominant player is how predictable it makes the team, and I guess over reliance too. We’ve seen opposition much more effective with clearances due to this. I’m sure every opponent has some contingencies planned as a dominant opposition player can always be a late withdrawal or in-game injury. The advantage for Melbourne is Collingwood don’t know if it’s Preuss, Jackson, McDonald or even Weideman/Tomlinson they need to prepare for if it’s not Gawn. AFL level players need 6+ hours a day of PlayStation. You can’t eat into that and expect them to memorise multiple “if this, then do that” plans and also be able to execute them well while dominating FIFA and tick-toking too.

I never wanted Oliver dropped, but his foot disposal was underwhelming up until the last couple of weeks (against comfortably the two worst teams this season). It looked like Oliver at times was over thinking things, trying to pull off dinky little kicks and failing. They always look bad, a botched 55 metre kick frustrates the fans much less. But his hands are so good you can never seriously contemplate dropping him. Even if he kept ignoring coach’s orders I’d want him being “punished” by being played deep forward or on a half forward flank, not out of the team. I hope the penny has dropped and his confidence is up after the last two “easy kills” because his balance of disposal mix and confidence to use his foot speed has been just about perfect for mine in those games. And he’s been hitting up some really nice kicks too.

The AFL are dealing with this too simplistically. Punishing poor technique is the only thing they are doing (and I don’t know what ANB could actually do differently on this one). It’s part of the puzzle. Players need to be trained to protect them self in tackles rather than trying to dispose of the ball. This adds one layer of protection. I’d suggest a minimal 10 minutes per week per player of “getting tackled safely” training rather than the “get my arms clear so I can dispose of the ball” training they are clearly doing. Umpires need to pay the free kick as soon as the tackle sticks and it stops the tackled player’s movement where there was prior opportunity. They don’t and this makes the tacklers get more and more aggressive to bring the player down. If umpires paid these, that final force wouldn’t happen nearly as much. Why the AFL cannot perform a simple root cause analysis is beyond me.

I think it’s a perfect game to play Preuss if fit and has some level of scratch match or training track form. He would’ve rucked against Goldstein a thousand times at training so is likely to know how to nullify him in ruck contests. Yes Preuss is nowhere near Gawn for marking prowess and a saviour in the backline, but Gawn didn’t do much of that last night anyway as it looked like he was being managed forward rather than dropping into the backline. Gawn is too valuable to run into the ground. Jackson looks to be finding his feet as a second ruck. Not to underestimate North, but they are hardly setting to world on fire at the moment.

I’m very bullish on Jackson after his last two games. Started like a house on fire and faded against Brisbane, but there were a couple of marking contests that gave me flashbacks to Schwarz. He didn’t mark either, but he hit the ball at speed in a small pack, fumbled the ball of course, but he never took his eye off the ball and he was tracking the ball and almost completed the mark on the way down, and then when he hit the ground he was roving his own crumb almost instantly. It was the fluid movement and agility Schwarz had pre knees. In time he will marks more of those than he is doing now, and give most tall defenders or ruckman a really difficult time as very few will be able to cover him both in the air and on the ground. I don’t think he has anywhere near the foot skills of Schwarz who was pretty exceptional for his size, but his vision and hand passing coupled with the mobility make it clear why he was a compelling prospect even with Gawn hopefully on the scene for another 5 years or so.

Maybe tweet Mahoney or any similar person at another club and see if they give a general response?

A professional sportsperson in a contact sport isn’t really like a normal job though. I can’t think of too many other jobs where injury is inevitable, and serious injury reasonably likely, so the players would go out there with a very different attitude than your average office worker. The players have their union and I suspect that body has input into acceptable contract structures with regard to handling impacts of injury. At the very least they would have had a big input into contract structure for draftees as they all get standard contracts when they first get drafted with amount and length based on where in the draft they were taken. At one point interstate rookie draft draftees had an additional year compared to locals which would have been driven by the union, not sure if that’s still the case. I’m sure players could take out personal injury insurance or income protection insurance if they chose, but given the high risk of serious injury the premiums would be huge. The clubs would have insurance to hedge the cost of surgeries should they have a particularly unlucky run with injuries requiring surgery, maybe they also insure against potential player payment blow outs due to high rates of injury?

Unfortunately I don’t know how it works in reality, just reverse engineering what must be going on to some degree based on the finances aspect with some guess work. Clearly the club covers the medical costs of injury, but I suspect an injured player would get nothing for games they don’t play if they don’t play, or are medically unable to play. Just their base payments. Not sure how omitted due to “Managed” would work if the player wants to play, there’s no clear injury, but due to loads they are rested (unless of course “Managed” is code for a genuine injury that is being kept quiet). Maybe spirit can bring an actual (name sanitised) example of how it works.

I’ve read a few times lots of injuries to older established players can blow out a club’s player payments, that being cited as a factor sometimes when clubs have financial losses or lower surpluses. That would mean the older players tend to be on higher base, but lower match payments. Because if the older players were on higher match payments, it would cost less match payments if they got injured and younger players played in their place. It makes sense as the older players are the better ones, otherwise they don’t get to be older players, and have more power when negotiating contracts because there would probably be other clubs interested, so they go for higher guaranteed, lower incentive deals.

First off the Pickett decision to pay a free was an error, the umpire made a mistake. Both in that the only player he interfered with was Tomlinson, and second he got a hand to the ball, so no real point examining this one against how these should be adjudicated. But what you suggest is basically what they are meant to allow, with touching the ball being the indicator of 5 metres concept. They allow rule violations, mostly high contact but also technical push in the back, and shepherding with the ball more that 5 metres away (if you do the physics maths, the ball in flight will almost always be far more than 5 metres away when first contact is made for a hanger), if the player almost marks it. “Unrealistic attempt” is just the umpire saying “I’m not allowing you rule immunity on this occasion” but a bit quicker. I think all these blind eyes to rules in a marking contest is great as it encourages a unique and spectacular part of the game, but gee it makes the umpire’s job even harder (not in this case, seemed to be my pet hate of guess what probably happened rather than look at what actually happened).

To be fair Gold Coast pulled four goals out of their back passage. Rankine *2 and Ellis *2 So Melbourne were due a little luck.

100% the job of the coaching group to work through. Goodwin publicly says he is staying the course, even in the face of this alarming statistic. The sample is too large to ignore. I hope in reality he’s not so stubborn as to be able to accept either the course is not working, or the players are unable to implement the course, and behind the scenes they are coming up with adjustments. I hope the public messages are just that. If they aren’t coming up with adjustments, and the course continues to not work, the clock should be ticking loud on Goodwin’s tenure. While Craig Jennings may have some sour grapes, his observations in the Gerard Whateley interview seemed spot on and quite damning. Melbourne seem quite simple to beat.

I agree Pert appears to be playing the role I’d expect of a CEO, although I don’t know the detail of his goals and whether he is achieving them. If the strategy requires, or the Board has directed Pert, to be a public mouthpiece for the club and in the press all the time then Pert is failing, but I doubt that’s the ask. You wouldn’t want the standard “Yeah, nah” former players who wind up in footy departments to get their hands on key decisions and appointments around finances, facilities, lobbying governments and the like. It’s precisely why you need the non footy department parts of a footy club, so they can focus on all that stuff and the footy department can focus on winning games and ultimately winning premierships. The things in the Board’s strategy, and what the CEO tries to drive to deliver the strategy, should definitely enable and support the footy department to win premierships as that’s what the club is all about at the end of the day. If a footy club CEO is meddling in the footy department that’s a problem, and IF that’s what Pert did at Collingwood but isn’t doing at MFC that is a good sign of self development and being able to stick to his brief. It’s for this reason at footy clubs you see Boards appoint head coaches, even though the head coach is one, maybe two levels below the CEO on the organisation chart, and the head coach appears to be realistically more accountable directly to the Board. That’s very different to other corporate governance structures. If Pert is delivering on what the Board wants and Pert is happy, and he’s letting the footy department live and die by their own decisions and actions, he should stay. If not, he should go, but it is also easier said than done to find better replacements.

First off no departing CEO appoints their replacement, it is and always should be a Board decision. A good CEO grooms potential internal successors and for Jackson it was Mahoney. There was an erroneous assumption Mahoney for CEO was a certainty amongst the in clique that included Jackson and Mahoney, and then the Board did what they should and appointed who they thought was best to carry out the Board’s vision and strategy - Pert. Whether Pert has been able to do that is neither here nor there for the purpose of this story, it is the Board’s role to make the appointment which is key. Jackson’s nose was out of joint due to his plan being scuttled, hence any damning response. In any organisation it’s highly dangerous, and likely toxic, to keep an unsuccessful CEO candidate around, irrespective of their abilities in their role. It takes a very mature person to accept they missed out, and then wholly support the person they missed out to. Any organisation has cliques, it’s whether the cliques are healthy or toxic, and those on the inside of toxic cliques always see their clique as healthy if it’s working well for them. A toxic clique can get in the way of decisions that most benefit the organisation as loyalty to the people in the clique can override. A toxic clique can put good people on the outer if that clique holds power. In my career in corporates I have exposure to high profile CEOs and other C-suite execs who you would see frequently in the press if you read business sections of newspapers or the AFR, and the public persona and image can be quite different to the reality. I was a direct report briefly to a current CEO of a major company, and he talked the talk but didn’t walk it by his actions. I still get a chuckle when I see some of the stuff he comes out with publicly given some of the things I know and have experienced first hand with him. From discussions I had with someone formerly at the club, MFC was not miles off my corporate experiences.

I would love the umpires to get tough on time wasting tactics. The standing over the ball so an opposition player can’t quickly get it to their teammate who has a free, the “Huh, are you sure you mean that player, the only one near me? I’ll check again because I didn’t hear you properly.” rubbish, the I-was-clearly-out marked-but-I-will-pretend-the-mark-is-4-metres-over-where-it-was-until-told-three-times-to-move-back routine, the juvenile “I can bullet hand pass to a moving teammate 20 metres away over my shoulder but the only way to get the ball to the stationery opposition player 10 metres away is a slow, floaty arc toss”. Watch junior footy, none of this happens, so it’s clearly coached into the players as a tactic. My only fear is I have high confidence if this happened Melbourne would adjust to this the least well and (rightfully) end up with 17 50m penalties against each game. Playing to the current interpretation of the rules, right or wrong, is also a skill.

Umpire #23 Finlay showed absolutely zero feel for the game. A consistent string of logic contradicting decisions such as this. Melksham’s dive and 50 was silly, but it was no worse than plenty of other time wasting efforts that went unpunished through the rest of the game. Not sure If was Finlay who also didn’t pay the obvious drop on Martin when tackled or the non-50 when a frustrated Martin gave a shove to a Melbourne player who marked the ball in the clear, or didn’t pay the 50 when Higgins (I think, maybe Baker) did the old “Which player?” theatrics to slow things down when it was clear as day on the mic which the player the ball was meant to go to (no crowd noise excuse). I thought Melbourne also got a couple of fortunate ones.

I can handle skill errors as frustrating as they are, every AFL player butchers kicks or hand passes and that is surely not the coaching staff’s fault because I’m confident they don’t say “Fellas, move it through the middle fast, and then shank one to the opposition so we are hopelessly out positioned and give up an easy goal.”. What I can’t handle are quick kicks from a won centre hit out in the 6-6-6 era going to an unmanned defender 40 out directly in front. The rushed kick ALWAYS goes there. What I can’t handle is three defenders flying and not killing the ball, and then other times no defenders flying and the opponent’s tallest player marking uncontested, or the opposition hitting up an unmanned teammate 40 out straight in front from a stopped play situation. Either the structures being coached don’t work, or the players aren’t doing what they are instructed to do. Or both. If the coaches aren’t stubborn (I have it on authority they do play favourites and are stubborn...) then they will know what is going on, and what they need to change. I’m not optimistic it will get sorted out.

Unfortunately there are no VFL games to “ease him back through”. Selection or promotion can only be based on training track form this year, although there was some talk of unofficial scratch matches between AFL listed players not selected. If Bennell gets a game at any time, it will likely only be off the back of the kind of work he’s already been doing. I’d personally rather take a risk on a potential match winner with untraceable natural talent (5% success rate in my mind that Bennell comes off even medium term due to his body) and then fall back onto a Spargo or ANB if it fails than vice versa.