Deecisive

I find it strange that we had such a poor year last year, recruited so well but most people are still picking all the same players from 2012 as our best defense for 2013. This years team should not be last years team with Dawes, Viney and Toumpas added to the mix. We need a more significant shakeup. I hope Neeld is not so sentimental when it comes time to pick the teams. The NAB cup will give us a chance to try most of these players out, all will be on notice that the best performers will be playing week 1. The pressure will then be on those playing for Casey to prove they are playing well enough to dislodge someone from the round 1 team. If Macdonald does not improve his kicking then he needs to be replaced, same with Frawley with both his decision making and lax approach at times. We cannot tolerate poor disposals, turnovers or poor decision making.

God its good to have choice and lots of options going forward!

Aaron has put in some good years for the demons when so many others went missing, he has received a lot more attention from opposition teams in previous years and I never really saw any concerted effort by melbourne players to run interference or assist in blocking taggers to break him free. Davey's disposal was usually first class. If the team can play as a team and support each other by blocking and shepherding a bit more then Aaron will come into his own again and he will deliver quality ball to our forwards.

Tanking was not the problem with melbourne the truth is that melbourne has been out in the wilderness for years, living off its proud but ancient history. It lost its way, other clubs took a more professional attitude and are years ahead of us, consider the state of: - our social club facilities for players and supporters. - training facilities - fitness staff ability to developing players. - our recruitment staff, who have had more 1st round draft picks than most clubs and yet we are still one of the worst performers. - no real strategy or game plan, who or what do we want to be... Neeld has given us a vision the hardest club to play against. - club culture - lack of skill - lazy players - players, we have been overpaying 2nd rate players for years because we have had to use our cap, players have not had to try or excel to get a game. How many MFC players have had 30+ possession games - we have had even had easier drawns than many clubs - debt, lack of sponsors, etc... 2009 came along at a time when all of the above was at or close to its peak. i dont believe any of the players stopped trying to play there best football, clips will show that lack of skill, lack of quality players, fitness, hugh number of injuries etc all contributed to that horrible season and several thereafter. I dont even think Bailey tried to loose. I believe he is competitive enough to want to win everytime. He may have been more adventurous in 2009 swapping players into unfamiliar positions such as in the Richmond game but what choice did he have as a coach, these moves sometimes actually worked and allowed us to almost win the Richmond game. Neeld any many others have done likewise without being called for tanking. I dont recall any games where there were wholesale changes where we left out better players, as even our better players were pretty substandard. CC and CS may have made comments and jokes about it, but in the end i doubt if that was would have influenced bailey and the players, we just were too disfunctional to do any better. If we profited by it then that was what the rules allowed. The idea that so called tanking has now made us disfunctional is nuts were were already crap and have stayed there. Neeld recognized the problems are just not having a game plan and has put into place with the football department actions to address many of the business and fundamental problems so that we have the building blocks to be a better side. Tanking is just an excuse to say we were not really as crap as we pretended we were, truth is we were.

investigators are obviously basing jack's possible contribution to the games in 2009, based on what they have probably seen in the last 1-2 years, in other words they dont have a clue about football and have not done their homework on his stats and other things that would have demonstrated his value to the team. Quite frankly I am surprised that they did not pull us up for PLAYING Morton in those games he played in, in 2009.

The journalists are trying to get what snippets of the report they can out onto the street, try to get 20 stories out of it instead of 1. They do not care about the right or wrong of it as long as they get a story out first. There is no investigative journalism at play here just rumour and inuendo. The plodders doing the investigation are making a farce of the whole thing, maybe thats why they were chosen. Anyone know if they did anything for Fairwork Australia or Treasury bribery investigations No football player or coach is going to take the vast majority of their 'allegations' seriously as being anything but fumbling and bumbling far in excess of anything shown by Melbourne players in the Richmond game. That has to undermine the whole credibility of their arguements, that is if they actually found one that will stand up to any sort of scrutiny. The 800 page report seems to propose a litany of pathetic arguments (without balance) to explain extensive tanking planned for and put into practice sometime shortly after the queens birthday match, in fact so cunning was our plan that the Dees brains trust decided to play crap football since then to cover out tracks.

For them to prove we tanked they have to prove we played substandard sides even by our own poor standards. I really dont know if there was any good players left out deliberately. All of the players out there would have been playing for their futures, more so in games like this near the end of the season. The moves made by Bailey actually resulted in us hitting the lead, so you find it difficult to say these were moves to help us tank when they worked, logical would say that if we were loosing and he wanted us to loose then he would have kept everyone where they were. Rotations are impacted by injuries, can we see stats from other sides that have had 3 players injured, did they keep their rotations up to 100. Fumbling well thats just clutching at straws. So if they cannot prove any intent to loose then we did not tank. I agree the AFL will change the charge to bring the game into disrepute as that way they go after individuals and CC's own comments will be used against him. Pretty grubby if people telling jokes now becomes the new moral standard for the AFL, your safer taking drugs. As for the tapes problem with that is do they exist and if they do then the AFL will want to hear all the tapes for the other games as well. Every cough, laugh or joke will be put under the microscope. The farce will continue.

I guess someone will take the last 30seconds apart frame by frame to see the siren sounded before the mark was completed, hence the field umpire probably took the game away from melbourne. The dropping of players is a joke, there are few players in the melbourne side that you would have said at that time had a mortgage on their position so anyone could have been dropped. I have done a number of investigations in the past and I find it remarkable that all of the facts do not appear to have been gathered, or maybe not reported. A fair investigation would look at who was left in and out of the side and investigate why, i.e. suspension, etc.. they would look at the rotations and who was rotated and not and reasons why rotations did not occur. They would have looked at the moves made to ensure they made sense given that Dean Bailey was criticized for bringing the game into disrepute by his coaching moves, moves like paul johnson, etc which resulted in us fighting back and taking the lead until the siren sounded, it was only after the siren that we lost the game. i just cannot understand any investor worth his salt not following every lead. If playing players out of position is an offense then they will be after Neeld soon for his moves playing backs forward, of course the win over Essendon could be seen as a result of Essendon tanking rather than a great move. I truely believe every mfc player was out there playing their best football, they were not interested in draft picks, i think most of them would have been trying to impress to ensure they got their contract renewed for the following year. As for fumbling, this could be the scourge of the new millennium, I suggest the AFL rules committee immediately take action any player found to be fumbling should be given a free kick this will stop the pretend fumble turnovers. Quite frankly the assertion being made that players deliberately fumbled is insulting in the extreme. Lastly I see the Hun has an article talking about Jpod playing in defence, I guess Geelong is signallying their intent to tank.

MFC should kick in and assist DB with his legal defense and costs, he is only incurring these because he was our coach at the time, so is the only reason he requires a lawyer. The failure to protect employees (he was at the time) will make others wonder if MFC will look after them if they have problems. As for the article, interesting there are leaks and of the 800 page report the best the can come up with is referring to secret (weekly) meetings in the VAULT!!!! and 3 minutes of a game we almost won. The number of rotations I find interesting in that the investigators must have asked about injuries etc so should have factored that into the number of rotations, leaking it means the press can have a bit of a field day on it until the MFC responds with the details on injuries etc. How many of these other 800 pages is devoted to the Richmond game. I love the bit where they could not get anyone to confirm that players deliberately fumbled... how can someone make such a stupid statement to believe in the heat of battle where you are just ahead on the scoreboard someone says to themselves that they better fumble so that we can loose. Does anyone really expect that highly competitive players would rollover for what, so MFC can get another pick, does anyone really think players playing for their spot on next years roster thinks that. If the AFL is going to take the last 3 minutes of the Melbourne Richmond game as a benchmark then how would the Carlton/Melbourne game the year before stand scrutiny, surely there must be 30seconds or more of inappropriate activity there. The AFL only opens itself up to further scrutiny taking this approach. sadly melbourne cannot win this, sure we might beat the AFL and not loose draft picks, but other areas where we have received financial assistance will eventually suffer. End of the day someone from the club needs to write up a credible defense and sit down the with AFL and do a deal to close this out before it goes to court, as neither of us wins if that is the case. And if the truth be told no one cares except Caro and a few journo's who have nothing better to do with their time.

The AFL ought to have a look at the Demons win / loss ratio over the last 5 years and see what sort of consistency there is there. We have had crap weak sides for a number of years our form in 2009 is pretty consistent with our form in 2012 when there were no priority draft picks were on the table. Not sure you can same the same level of consistency applied to other teams that after they received their priority picks made the top 4 and 8 in the next couple of years.

The headlines forgot to mention Carlton and Geelong players also Tanked... gives one a sense of deja vu

Oh no "Melbourne Players Tanked at the MCG" could end up in another series by CW or AFL investigation.

The AFL must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that actions taken by the coaches or players was different from those taken by other clubs and that these actions clearly slow an intention to loose games. If they cannot prove the above then it will not stand up in court. Hearsay and the words from disgruntled players need to be validated or else it has little value. If Melbourne took this to court I would feel certain they would be seriously looking at calling coaches, assistance coaches etc to call into question these same actions by other clubs.

Bailey was a so so coach, unfortunately he had a crap team that didnt perform, which resulted in more high draft picks to waste on skinny kids who were not ready to play with the big boys which perpetuated our crappyness. Bailey still had to try to win games with the list he had, somewhere along the season it was evident that we were not going anywhere and he was given the freedom to play younger kids, i.e. his performance at the club was not going to be measured by wins in that year this is not taking this is what every club begins to do to some degree once it sees the season slipping away. He played kids to give them time with the big boys, he tried people out of position, etc.. to give them experience. Just because someone may have made jokes about tanking does not mean he endorsed it, followed their direction,or that the players ever did not try. The actions Bailey has taken have been taken by other teams over the years. If this goes to court Melbourne will be asking why Collingwood's resting players is ok but not for melbourne, etc.. This is a no win situation for the AFL, melbourne will not lie down and take this while other teams have prospered from similar actions.

While Caro and others do not have evidence worth anything the AFL does have email and hard disks etc from the MFC, anyone who sent emails or wrote any docs that could be construed as implying tanking, encouraging tanking, cheering for losses, crowing about getting extra draft picks will be scrutinized as part of their case.

Looking at replays of this years games shows how bad we are, we basically had no structure once we lost Mitch. Our forwards were useless and half the time pushing so far up the ground to help get the ball which just resulted in us kicking it to badly out numbered forwards. Defensive pressure was good at times at other times we had no run or chase. We gave away soft frees the Westcoast game particularly sticks in my mind and our tackling was poor. We got it together in a few games last year for a quarter or two and probably one game the essendon game. Neeld has essentially replaced half of our team with guys who will help address most of these deficiencies. This will make us more competitive, it will allow us to score more and it will result in us winning games. I would see winning 8 games as a fail given our easy draw. 10 would be my bare pass mark and 12 games a decent score.

Been watching the foxtel reruns of some of our games, we have a way to go. Having said that we have recruited well and now have greater depth so that we can stop playing players based on name and make them earn their spots in the team, which should make us a lot more competitive,I would hope that with the soft draw we have and changes in personnel that we could make 10th spot by the end of 2013.

Ou\\\ Oucher I know your trying to be optimistic like most of us but the scores for last year are on the board we were not very good in defense. I gotta say Frawley does worry me, this last year I used to shudder at times when he had the ball, he got caught regularly, his kicking at times was woeful he seemed as if he was often trying to stroll around instead of running when in traffic. I would now rate Tom Mc well ahead of frawley. We often butchered the ball so we were one of the worst teams for oppositions scoring off our turnovers which often meant our defense was often the ones who turned it over or were not marking their players on turnovers. As a unit they had trouble just getting the ball out of defense from kickins. While they are not bad players they ALL need to move up a notch or two for the Dees to be more competitive.

Based on best players, playing at their best. Unfortunately football aint like that, players have crap years and others have sensational years. Injuries and depth are tested, some players mature and get better which will benefit sides like GWS, GC, MFC, and others will age which will hamper GFC, HFC, etc... I would love to see how they ranked everyone last year.

I think this trip away is pivotal in helping so many new players bond together. I wonder if they could do another mini type camp next year before the season starts again possibly up north to further get the team thing going stronger focus on more team work exercises.

Cook was a potential Key position player who could compete with the big men from day 1. he was taken for what he could potentially provide. That potential has not been realised, it does not mean that it cannot be, it just means that Melbourne could not afford to wait for Cook, Gys, Morton and other with enormous potential to realise it. Re the comment that KP players take 5 years, not sure I agree, and hopefully hogan also does not agree. Body shape and maturity really determine if they can be competitive.

Neeld moved on players who did not match his team ethics, style and skill level so would not fit our team. Most of those who we let go had sufficient interest from other clubs to take them as ROOKIES or backup players who will probably play most of their games in the reserves, if they do get a seniors game its because their style fits their new teams style or need. Rivers and Baloney probably being the two exceptions who would normally get regular games. I am more than pleased with all of the trades and pickups.

I'm looking forward to seeing a true team effort, all the players doing the Neeld tough football thing, backing each other up and supporting each other.

Have to respect the direction he wants to take us in. We need to be able to put pressure on the ball carriers to create turnovers, if you dont the top clubs will just run over you with their superior skill. Even the most skillful make mistakes when put under pressure. Its a game plan he started with and he has restructured the list to support that direction, most of his new recruits are hard at the ball and good tacklers from all reports. In February we will see if the team is able to deliver. I believe they will.

He has unfortunately shown that he lacks the discipline and common sense to hold off on the booze even for a couple of weeks. Sadly a wasted talent.