Deecisive

Question is how much is mitch worth, given his track record of taking the money and running for rehab, what will anyone pay him, i doubt he would be getting 750k from anyone with that record, How would a club take him on knowing that he has depression that could recur, I would suspect only a club that had a pretty good level of confidence that he was over it. which is pretty good because getting over depression is not something truly disappears.

I dont think Roos is ambivalent, I think he is mightily disappointed Mitch is the sort of player virtually any side would scramble to get. I think he is gutted in loosing possibly his best player for a second time, i.e. lost him to retirement to then find there maybe a chance of a return to now find he wants to go somewhere eles. But what can he do about it on national tv that will not either come back on him, the club or mitch. he played it cool as he could. It now about where we go from here, i have to question the depression bit, for a guy who quickly went into depression he seems to have quickly found his way out again as well, and in doing so have negotiated not only a healthy settlement to his multi year contract with the MFC but possibly a nice healthy new contract with another club. Gee things seem to have really worked out well for Mitch and his manager financially. If mitch was really seriously depressed then my deepest apologies to him, but unfortunately the world is full of unscrupulous people/managers who take advantage of other peoples good will and good intentions. I hope this is the former case, but fear it is probably the later.

He is gone, Roos knows it but is not saying so, possibly in the hope that that may change his mind. One thing I found interesting is that Roos mentioned that Mitch's agent orchestrated the payout earlier this year. that would obviously have been money in his pockets also, you would have to think he would have had in the back of his mind being able to get Mitch back playing and earning another high wage sometime in the near future hence double dipping. Another thing I found interesting was bomber thompsons comment which were along the lines of that Mitch got a payout from melbourne therefore does not owe melbourne anything. A few seconds later my son said their was a rumor of mitch going to Essendon, it certainly had me thinking a lot more about bombers stance. Lastly there has been a lot of talk about compensation, i am wondering under what rule melbourne would be considered eligible for compensation, after all we did not get it for the last few years when we met the guidelines for compensation for poor performance. So can someone please advise why we would be eligible for compensation.

I wonder if he went to an Essendon doctor, they we can at least blame the drugs for his decision.

Obviously we should have checked what team his doctors supported. If MFC is not the right environment for him then you would have to also scrap StKilda off the list too as well as another 6-8 teams.

disappointing GNF.

Lets forget the personality issues and judge him by his football capability and what he can bring to the club. I think he would be an asset off the half back line, question is how much is it going to cost, collingwood is not noted for their generosity in trading. They think even their refuse is worth more than our best.

Roos and Viney are not just going to let Mitch walk without trying to extract the best outcome for the MFC. I have confidence in them doing what it takes, while the club has assisted mitch through his depression, it is obvious that his depression is lifting, possibly due to the possibility of playing for another club and being paid another sizable amount of money. So its down to business now for Roos and co, what can we get for mitch if he goes, or play him if he wants to stay.

Given the year left us two key forwards short in Clarke and Hogan, and Dawes did not play the first few games, I believe we have improved considerably. Last year the team did not appear to be able to come to terms with Neelds game plan, they seem to have understood and tried to execute Roo's game plan pretty well. We obviously failed big time with our skills and turnovers which cost us quite a few games but some of those responsible will be departing and hopefully replaced with better ball users. The odd poor umpiring decision may also have had an impact on a couple of games. The wins we had were against quality teams that may have under estimated us, but still were better teams, the fact they all tried to kick goals from anywhere instead of passing the ball around worked in our favor. Almost all of the games we played except for the Eagles and GWS we were competitive at times though sadly inconsistent throughout the game and let leads blow out with the odd 10-15 minutes of lost concentration/effort. The GWS was probably the worst outcome for this year because we looked so disinterested, though I have to say the GWS has improved significantly from last year. considering how bad we were last year I would give the team a C-.

Mitch is on our list until october 31st, isnt that around the time when it is rumored that he will make some decision on where he is at, i.e. a possible come back? is that a co-incidence, if he was sneaky he would make that decision after the 31st of october, so options are 1. he says he wants to continue with the Dees, 2. that he wants to go to somewhere else and we can relist him for a trade, or he says no thanks and walks away from football for another year or so. he could obviously designate for the draft at the end of the year but that may mean he cannot choose his destination.

Melbourne should remove the current offer and put a second lesser paying offer on the table with a note that that offer is good for 1 week, after which another offer of a lesser amount will be offered, so that he can take all the time he likes to make his decision.

Bombers would like to stop it but know they cannot, just trying to get through the finals series and the next draft before they are hit, with their 6 month probably back dated sanction.

When you look at it Free Agency is of considerable value to GWS and Goldcoast both are unlikely to have players who are free agents, as such they can buy who ever they like with no loss of compensation. If melbourne did not have Frawley as a free agent then we could bid for a number of free agents as we are likely to have room in our salary cap, not saying they would be attracted to Melbourne but they could certainly be courted. Sides will need to tie up free agents by their 6th year otherwise trade them and get what you can before they go into their 7th year, as keeping them only inhibits your teams ability to attract free agents at no penalty to you.

What is the value of putting someone on the rookie list, as it restricts when they can play for you, need to keep rookie list free for players you want to develop not players you may want to play straight away.

Its fancy dress for goodness sake, people love to complain about anything, people should be able to go as anything, i.e. Captain James Cook, Adam/Eve, Nero, George Bush, suicide bomber, hitler, rolf, harpooned whale, or any of 1500 different types of tasteless Halloween monsters or variety of hacked dead. The only reason this is raised to such ridiculous heights is because the media went and posted the picture describing outrage that few would have known anything about until the picture was published. If the papers had not published then this would have passed harmlessly by the world. It is not is if these are two well known stars dressing up, people are just too damn sensitive these days and everyone with any sort of grievance or whinge does so. including me.

The saints will be looking to see if they can trade the first draft pick for some good young talent, which is probably to the GWS. I suspect the GWS will probably still be interested in off loading some other players for 2nd or 3rd pick to keep topping up their talent pool with the very best in each year that they can.

I like all here would love to see Mitch run out on the the MCG with the Dees next year. Though if this is not to happen i would hope that Mitch would at least provide the MFC with the chance to trade him to Freo or to where ever he intends to go, rather than just walking off to another club and leaving the Dees down a top 20 pick and no compensation. I believe he is a decent enough person to look after the dees as far as he can.

Watts will do well with a side that can deliver the ball to him, he is reasonably good mark on the lead but not very good at the stand and deliver/wrestle type mark. He would be a fantastic forward for any side that can put the ball out in front of him to run onto which hawthorn, Geelong, freo, westcoast, well actually virtually any side but ours can do.

you would have to think that the MFC would not have given up on Mitch given the current state of our list, question is is he interested in staying a demon, or would be prefer to be a docker.

A fully fit mitch able to see out a 5 year contract would be worth a top ten pick, but no one can guarantee they are going to get a fit mitch clark so his value is dramatically decreased. Huge potential risk with him.

It was good to see the team fight it out far better than previous games, Kent has obviously understood the message from the coach to pass it to someone in a better position when you can instead of blazing away. Dunn, well was pretty poor today, did not seem to have any run, or fire, just a lot of pent up anger. Dawes, loved his aggression he was the only one who seemed to try to fire the team up. Those who say he costs us 4 or 5 goals, really, he may have turned the ball over a few times (but who didnt) the ball still had to be carried past a lot of melbourne players who didnt do their job for north to score. Riley love his endeavor but unless he can improve his delivery he is unlikely to get too many more games. Watts another watts like effort, did some good things didnt do a lot of others. Frawley bye mister chips, i hope todays performance did not devalue you too much. Jetta good game, fitzy tried and did pretty well. Now I can rest until trading starts and my hopes again rise like the phoenix to only crash and burn again next year like the dodo.

I would think the proposed fixture change would help a bottom team get into the finals, they would after all only need to be just out of the 8 as a number of teams are and they would be playing bottom sides so have a greater chance of winning the last 5 games, where as the top sides all need to play each other, so some of these sides will be loosing 2-5 games so could fall out. A mid year draft does sound like a good idea, though how do you cover anything other than a players retirement from your list. All players are contracted to the end of the season, so does this mean you can have extra players or do you have to let players go. Who is going to have money left to draft players given you have to spend virtually all of our salary cap?

Given jack was outplayed by Bennell can you blame them for not kicking it to him..... Jacks lack of run, chase and really attitude is what appears to be wrong, i dont know if that is something simple that you can solve. He has massive potential and talent but without the desire and attitude he is just another player out on the field getting average stats. I really cannot recall too many times Jack has chased and I mean really chased, running flat out. He could go the way of Sylvia and move to another club and find that without an attitude change, he just may not make it into their side.

I would love to see some of the presidents of other clubs, melbourne included come out and can both the AFL and Essendon over this, this is sending the wrong signal to sportsman and to kids, saying that if you can come up with a good or even not so good story we will look the other way.

Sad but the happiest time for Melbourne supporters is after the end of the home and away games, anticipation and optimism generated by the draft (and list clean out) through to new recruits joining pre-season training and into practice matches, after that its normally been all down hill until the end of the home and away games again where we rinse and repeat.