Deecisive

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.

I would be deeply disappointed if he went and played with another club without giving melbourne FC the first option, we have paid him a generous contract for very little football and have been extremely supportive of him and his health. I would truly like to believe he would not repay that faith and support by going to another club. He may want to move back to Perth, but there are a lot of footballers who are playing in places they would prefer not to be that is part of the game unfortunately, if he wants to go back to freo then we should be able to trade something for that, not just see him get picked up by Freo for nix.

Riley at least brings in the right attitude and attacks the ball and the opposition, yes he may turn it over, but then I still think he is better than some of the spuds we have played who dont tackle, dont chase and dont have the right attitude and who still turn the ball over when they get it. Riley is still getting used to the team and AFL football so he is worth persevering with.

Definitely depressing reading, I hope to hell the club has done analysis on who they drafted and why as well as what went wrong so that they hopefully do not repeat such vast stupidity.

I think Fitzy did a decent enough job, his output equaled or bettered Frawleys of late when he played forward. The problem with the talls was the delivery and the lack of crumbers, I dont know where kent was playing during the game but I hardly sighted him doing anything creative. Bail was at least having a go,

My 7 year old grandson just got a tackle buddy for his birthday, just blow it up and fill the bottom with water and your good to go. You think we can chip in and buy one for Jack.

enough of the negative, we all know what went wrong time to see if we can see any light at the end of the tunnel. eagles kicked 13 of their goals in 2 quarters, I expect that was probably the end that their supporters were at, given the free kick count amongst other things. We will always be a man down playing in Adelaide and WA with the way the umpires are influenced by the local crowd. We were more competitive in the 2nd quarter and we won the last quarter on the score board, it can be said that the eagles had probably slowed down, but given they were after percentage I dont think they slowed down too much. We had a lot of passengers that will not be there next year, players who were not accountable for their man, did not man up, did not lead, did not chase, did not tackle, these players will be replaced with more proven players given Roo's strategy of trading some of our early draft picks. If we can pickup Malcheski and a couple of other quality players that will certainly help our backline defense. Our backline lacks a leader, Chip was supposed to be that leader but has failed to be the backline general when he is there, McDonald is a great spoiler but does not look to be a leader, i think Dunn is trying to be that leader but is probably not up to it. Next year Hogan will be playing forward for us, another year and preseason will help quite a few of our players, Gawn especially, if he can work on his marking a bit more, i.e. body position etc he would be a massive gain for our forward line as well as on the ball. We won a lot of the stats tonight including contested possessions, but strangely enough we were afraid to kick to a contest, surely if we are winning contested possessions you should be able to kick to our of your team mates to one side or another to give him some sort of advantage. We have early draft picks, and an outside chance at a priority pick which will help bring some quality either through the draft or trading. There is obviously the remote hope that Mich can get himself well and return to play for the Dees, Lastly only one more round of pain to go this year, before the optimism that comes with the draft season kicks in once more filling the remaining supporters with some form of hope for the future.