Deecisive

Roos game plan seems pretty clear to me, if this year we had Hogan and Clarke which was our original expectation then we would not be having this same discussion about our inability to kick so few goals, these other two would have contributed something. Next year we will have hogan and dawes that still leaves us significantly reliant on these two for our scoring. Roos has done what he can with the players he has to try to boost the forward line by moving frawley there, not a lot of other options other than possiblty Howe and garland. I prefer Howe in the backline at the moment to provide a bit more marking power there especially for kick ins etc..

it does not matter what we have or have not done in the past, what counts is there is a rule that stats that if you dont win enough games you are eligible for a pp. The failure to receive a pick then needs to be justified by the AFL why they REPEATEDLY refuse melbourne this when other clubs have had them. As for public opinion very few supporters are going to give any other club a priority pick or any other sort of helping hand. The sad thing is that other clubs should understand where we are at, and that we need these picks, it is not as if one extra pick to the Dees is really going to make that much difference to the top teams, other than it may make us more competitive next year which makes for a better contest all around.

It makes no sense to tell the players to go out there and play a totally different style of game than the one Roos has being trying to fuse into their brains, it will only confuse them even more on what they should or should not do as they would not have practiced this way. They need to go out and play the way the have been trained, but doing so with far better skill and heart than they have shown. Players should not be rotated off the field into interchange unless they are stuff from running and chasing hard. Blease, mckenzie and Tapscott have had their chances and failed, sorry no point them coming in playing one half way good game and getting another contract and clogging the list. Strauss well if he has not made it yet then he is not likely to. I would bring in Fitzy and Pederson for Grimes and Barry, and possibly Jimmy Toumpas and JHK for Matt Jones and Kent, we need to get more games into our younger players and they need to stand up and start playing better football. As a small reminder to Jack Watts that he is not an automatic pick I would put him on the interchange bench, on the end near the door/exit.

hmm so where is that magic switch that allows the MFC to now go out there and kick bags of goals. Roos has tried to instil some defensive awareness into players who sadly lacked it, they obviously also lack attacking instinct. A coach can only do so much if the players cannot execute even basic hand and foot passes. We have burnt heaps of coaches, we cannot afford to burn another.

I believe we deserve a pp only because it was designed for circumstances like those melbourne are in. not winning enough games. yes we have had a lot of top 20 picks but so what, picking someone does not mean it will translate to them being successful.We have had top ten picks leave who obviously would have assisted us, we gave up a top 10 pick to Bank Hogan so was a pick that did not provide us with a top 10 player in that year. . While i think there is certainly an element of MFC not being able to develop players we have not seen a lot from those players we drafted, we can see quite a few early and even late draft picks in other clubs that come in and make it and stay in the team, ours for whatever reason did not make it. Main criticism is from the powerful clubs that have lots of money and resources who laugh at us while they have lots of medico's, additional trainers, better facilities and trips to the rockies and say its our fault that we dont develop. Well we are trying but we are still working from a position far back in the field. We are also getting crappy TV times while the big boys continue to take up prime time television. If melbourne does not get a priority pick then we need to start to agitate to get more prime time spots, by agitate I would suggest we even threaten to take the afl to court for discrimination. As others have said collingwood gets a bum crowd and starts talking about compensation and that is a crowd that we at melbourne would probably be pretty happy with given our past drawing power. The MFC had 32,000+ supporters sign up this year, which is pretty good considering for each one that signs up there is probably another 4 or 5 that dont, the AFL runs the risk of alienating these people from football if they continue to play favourites, once melbourne has gone then others like stkilda and footscray will probably not be far behind, as this turns even more ruthless in the pursuit of $$ and premierships. Melbourne has had top ten and priority picks, but after the Goldcoast and GWS have scooped up the best. Sydney has tippet and buddy and really is buddy going to play for 10 years? Collingwood with their yank, GWS and Sydney with their training academies, eagles with their drafting of an ex top junior footballer who went to america for a few years so can be drafted without going into the pool. Essendon with their drugs which by the sounds of it the AFL knew before being told, if so what the hell were they doing about it, plus the infamous tanking saga, where only one club was investigated and only one club was punished and has that sigma attached to them. This is a business and every club is looking for their own advantage, we are seeking what is due us by the rules, the rules do not state that if you have had x picks before you are ineligible. If we are due it then give it to us.

I agree with with idea that we should ask the AFL to either give us a PP or provide us with the same level of access to prime time television as other clubs, so they then choose give up a draft pick or have a shite team playing in prime time and screwing their ratings.

I think roos not speaking to them says volumes about anger and what he thinks of their performance, and they will be thinking about it until he does say something which is likely to be tomorrow or Monday. I have no doubt he will not let what they did slide, better to let them simmer in their own juices for now. Question now is how many is he now looking to get rid of at the end of the year, as you really would be hard pressed to make a case for keeping quite a few of those who played/turned up today besides the quite a few who really failed to fire at Casey today.

We get punished terribly through turnovers. This means that we are not getting back and covering. I dont know how many times today I saw a turnover to a GWS player who ran the ball out of our defense because all of our players were busy chasing their own men so no one could figure out who should run at the one with the damn ball. Where we on the other hand had no run out of the backline of any note. So many times we went backwards when we could have gone forward and the crowd saw it and hated it. we do not have the skills to fool around with crap passing that was often intercepted or badly kicked to a demon who often then failed to gather it in. When you get badly beaten by a badly wounded lowly opposition then 3 or 4 new players is not really going to make a difference, i am afraid we are going to face a lot more years of such misery unless these guys can pull their damn finger out and play like the AFL footballers they are paid to be. The AFL should actually allow melbourne to vary their salary cap so that we do not have to pay out our full salary cap so that we dont pay mega $$'s to rubbish players. We have some players still contracted for a couple more years, pay them out, use the salary cap there rather than continuing to give it to vastly overpaid non-performers.

but at training they are only playing against their own insipid weak players so is not much of a test. They have shown their mettle time and time again over the past few years. Something is seriously wrong if we can take good coaches and ruin them, take top draft picks and ruin them.

Nothing wrong with Roos game plan it came down the players who did not have the football smarts, skill, or speed to cover the GWS players. The GWS had players running free all over the place as the demons continued to pay them no respect of stayed in stupid zone patterns. The GWS cut them to ribbons with their delivery as we were always second to the ball. Our forwards applied very little pressure to GWS players, in the first half our backs and mids disrupted this flow but in the second half the GWS players just danced around them. Kent absolutely butchered the ball far too often and let his man get far too many easy possessions, so many players were so busy watching their man that they let the man with the ball run free. An insipid performance and the axe must swing and swing hard, swap what you can and get what you can for any players that have any sort of currency, though on todays form not very few would have impressed any other coach. We have shot ourselves in the foot big time today, as we have shows GWS and other teams what they will be signing up for if they come to the MFC, not something many would want, so we are going to be a long way down their preference order unless we pay massive overs again. Depressing.

Re the 2 for 1 deal i was referring to the hogan deal, which i thought was a 2 for 1

Danks was at a couple of other clubs previously so they may have been looking at one of those.

Roos has a lot of holes to fill especially if we turn over a fair number of our list, so he is likely to be looking for 2 for 1 type deals, which may not deliver us the best but it will hopefully delivery us very good players.

GWS will have a lot of players being offered Big $$'s by other clus so they are going to be hard pressed to keep them all. They are fortunate that they have a surplus of good quality early draft picks that they have banked and can continue to trade for either tried and trusted players or more high draft picks. This way the keep refreshing the list with younger high potential kids and move on those surplus to needs. The GWS may know who they want to keep, the issue for them is can they afford to keep them and do they need to perhaps trade some of them to get the top draft picks they want more.

GWS players have had very little success in their limited existence so they will want to win they will be chomping at the bit to have a go at the dees who they see they have a real chance to beat again! Yes they have put a few out for surgery etc but they have a lot of good young early draft picks that are also looking to win a place in the side or bring themselves to the attention of other clubs. We will need to win this game, the giants are not going to be throwing it. I doubt any of the GWS players really care if they get pick 2 or 4 as they know they can trade excess players for whoever they want to St Kilda or Melbourne should they loose. Thinking they are going to tank will just get us over confident when we can least afford it.

34 players were identified as having taken banned substances, of those i believe essendon has stated that 14 have already left, we can assume that this latest court room farce will not be resolved until late in the year, say December by then another x number of players would have left or been delisted as they are unlikely to be picked up by another club. ASADA comes back with another show cause notice and Essendon again attempts to stall each time they send it back to court they gain another 4-6 months. they only need to have their lawyers do this another couple of times and they will get the number of players still playing for them who are going to get banned down to a manageable number so that they can then survive a reduced list of 10 or so instead of the original 34. The fact that these guys have taken drugs and are being allowed to continue to play while essendon continues to stall for time is a disgrace, afl should ban them from playing until the matter is resolved.

It is getting near the end of the year and all clubs will be spreading disinformation about their team and others. So it is difficult to believe all that you hear. I wonder how many of the top clubs are talking up players that they dont want to get lower clubs interested in them instead of their real targets.

The bombers delaying tactics are probably designed to deal with one court case and court appeal at a time. I would not be surprised if they have a few more court challenges for ASADA and the AFL to fight them every step of the way in the hope that ASADA or the AFL will make a mistake or give up. The real problem is the players, I have not heard of Essendon doing anything to protect the well being of the players, by not naming the majority of their list does not have any chance of leaving the club and getting traded to another club because of this. Players who are drafted or may want to go the Essendon, do not know what sort of team it will have next year if one at all. Thats not going to be fair to any draftees that get selected by them. any parent would probably be worried having their son drafted by them as they do not seem to believe they have done anything wrong using their players as guinea pigs for their pharmacological experiments.

yes and scully said he was not talking to GWS, pacts, promises etc are likely to be broken when $$ are on the table. Thankfully a few clubs will probably be throwing obscene offers at some of these GWS players which GWS will need to start matching soon. I am sure these guys are not going to enjoy being paid $250,000 per year while Scully is wandering around of $1m per year. i wonder which guy came up with the idea of the pact the guy on $200k per year or the guy on $500k per year?

trading two players picked at 2 and 4 for a couple of mid 20 picks if we are lucky does not sound much of a win situation for mfc. Both players have great potential and need time with Roos and co to bring that out. We are already expectingh/hoping there will be a major cleanout of between 8-12 players this year, getting rid of some of our better players may be too much of a hit on the team and their confidence. These guys have the ability they now need to start to produce it. Our attacking game has obviously been thrown out of kilter by the loss of Clarke and Hogan, not many teams will cope well with 2 of their best forwards out, i.e. how would collingwood go without Cloak and Jessie white, oh hmm maybe that is not the best example...

we are playing GWS they are not going to be anywhere near as brutal as westcoast, and as some other posters have rightly commented, Casey is a bit of a basket case that is likely to provide limited and most likely poor delivery, so the benefit if running around for casey is greatly diminished. So if they are going to debut him in the next two weeks then I would put him in this week as I believe the MFC would provide him with slightly better delivery and support. It is not as if he will be pushing out someone with extreme talent. Given we only kick 6-8 goals a game he would not necessarily have to set the world on fire to keep up with the existing team average.

Essendon is stalling for time pure and simple and prepared to waste supporters money by the bucket load to try to get through this years finals. If the existing joint investigation is considered illegal, even though essendon asked for ASS-ada to be involved, and James Hird supposedly stated that he told Asada the truth and was happy to do so. Then asada will just do another investigation, it could mean that the AFL may also need to redo their investigation, there is no way Essendon can win the war, maybe only a minor skirmish over technicalities. I am surprised all this stuff about was the joint investigation legal or not, that Essendon did not have the ability to not answer questions on the grounds it may incriminate themselves, why was the question not asked of Essendon and Hird, what questions did they think were incriminating. other than you are the coach of essendon. Essendon may find that Asada's 6th month offer is now going to be removed from the table, though I would prefer to see the coaches and those responsible for the players burnt rather than just the players. Hird has to take responsibility for what Danks and co were doing.

I doubt Essendon are so delusional to think that Asada is just going to walk away and let them get away with it. Sounds like essendon is trying to postpone the death knell until after the finals series so that they have one more chance at the finals before they get hit. Interesting issue is going to be what happens if all of these players get 6-12 months off. I would assume that their list can still only accommodate the same number of players as other sides, though the AFL could potentially allow them to do something dodgy to have additional players, well that was possibly before they started to throw mud at the AFL. I would also assume that any old and new players would all have to be paid out of next years salary cap.

Shows that essendon does not want an honest investigation, it is doing all it can to retract the truth and have it made inadmissible so that it cannot be used against them. Asada should basically state ok we will start again but forget any deal about leniency for co-operation because you are not co-operating, so maximum ban 2 years will apply and that they will be ready to serve Essendon players March next year.

collingwood will be looking for forwards so that means chucking money GWS players to try to pick one up or will be chasing early draft picks to pick up one and up and coming forward. i suspect chasing ready made players is more likely if not we maybe able to do a deal for one of our early picks.