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I'm sure it's been asked before: is it or will it become publicly available?

To be fair, the actual headline to CW's article is Demons cleared, guilty, finedhttp://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/demons-cleared-guilty-fined-20130219-2epm0.html I doubt she is responsible for truncating it on the website.

Unfortunately, I think the perception of a lot of people is going to be that this was the AFLs way of saying we tanked without acually having to say it (and possibly defend it in court)... that's a brush that I don't want the club to be tarred with. *edit To be fair, MFC was already tarred with it... just that this is not going to change anyone's mind.

To those who have griped at the 500k fine... it's obviously a form of vicarious liability. The conduct engaged in by CC and DB was within the scope of their employment. I fully expect that Essendon will be given a similar fine if their employees are found to have engaged in conduct unbecoming (or whatever the charge ends up being). It seems to me to be quite justified, although the amount is questionable. I also want to know exactly what Bailey did "having regard to" CC's comments. Whatever it is, the AFL is saying that it was somewhere between the lines of trying to win and tanking, but didn't cross the latter.... very mysterious, very coy. All that was mentioned, as far as i can see, was "resting" players. I wish a journo had've gone down that line of inquiry at the presser. Then we would finally have an idea of how far a coach can go. Dangerous turf for the AFL to tread on though, people would start comparing Bailey's conduct to those of coaches in previous years at other clubs.... In the end, though, this reflects the principles of a good settlement, i.e. - Demonland isn't happy & - BigFooty isn't happy ....so that probably means the AFL is pretty happy with itself...

Let's not make wild claims here. Stories like this generate a tonne of publicity = a tonne of page views = good for advertising. I doubt that anyone in advertising or real estate will jump off The Age just because CW has a bee in her bonnet re MFC... I have read most of CW's other articles on this topic thinking that where there is smoke, there must be fire - but this one is way over the top.

Source? Sorry just have not read or heard that anywhere... AFAIK 1. Cannot make body contact until ball is thrown in/up 2. Ball to be thrown up around the ground, not bounced Both rules favour tall athletic leapers IMO, not the Jamar/Hille type.

^^huh? I thought we were agreeing. Just genuinely interested as to people's feelings on what the ruck division will look like in 2013 with the list as it stands (ie no Gumby or Pedersen), assuming that all are healthy. I think most of us thought that Dawes would ruck in some capacity, and I was surprised that appears to have been completely ruled out. Clark can ruck, but yeah, you don't want him to if at all possible since he's so dangerous up forward (and, as I said, they might want to take a softly softly approach to his injury). That to me seems to indicate that another player (Gawn, Spencer, Martin) will need to come in to take secondary ruck duties. Thankfully all three are tall or reasonably athletic i.e. suited to the new rules.

So, if all healthy, ruck division is Jamar/Clark 65/35? Clark is a better ruck option than Dawes no doubt, but you want him spending as little time out of the forward line as possible I imagine. For all his great qualities, you don't want Dawes as your primary forward target (ie Dawes + resting Jamar while Clark rucks). That's why I though Martin would be a key to this. Ie Jamar and Martin do the lions share of the ruckwork, with Clark in there only as a last resort really. Not that I know too much about it, but I would've though ruckwork wouldn't be ideal for Clark's foot injury either.

What do you think re the comments today from Neeld that: 1. Dawes will play forward 2. Watts will play back Given these statements and the new ruck rules around the ground, it seems to me that MFC won't want to trade Martin away. These new rules would seem to favour his style over that of Jamar (and Dawes, although they've said he won't be rucking anyway).

Listening to TWR - I can't remember player managers/AFL list managers ever being this available and talkative with the media (esp. the list managers). Wonder if there has been a bit of a push from the AFL to help out their radio venture? Often they obfuscate and talk in cliches but sometime they even say something concrete (eg Geoff Walsh saying that pick 20 wouldn't get it done for Dawes).

A good sign for the club - he had quite a few choices.

^^ I'm just not going to bother. You're clearly completely incapable of looking on this in a nuanced fashion. Black and white thinking helps no-one. You need to grow up and learn how to READ instead of putting words in other people's mouths to suit your own purposes. Try engaging in mature and reasoned argument without taking resorting to this sort of stuff. Disappointing. Neeld = messiah Moloney = devil Continue. Done with this.

Rodan? Played some good footy at port. Would take a one year contract you'd think.... Not sure you wanna be picking up those that have been delisted from a bottom rung club, though.

Yeah, so I decided to post when I saw everyone's here getting on Moloney's case, so what? Not all of us see Neeld as the messiah and Moloney as the devil. Things just aren't that simple sometimes. I like them both. I'm not "having a dig" at Neeld or the club in this case. All I said in my posts on the last page was that I suspected their personalities clashed and that Moloney might go better at another club. I didn't criticize Neeld at all. In fact I said that a lot of great coaches share his style. Simple comprehension skills...

Huh? Not what I said at all. Some people just read whatever they want to see I guess. All good, you continue to throw Moloney under the bus, and I will try to see the situation in something other than black and white.

I don't think there's anything wrong with an authoritarian/dictatorial/schoolteacher-esque whatever-you-want-to-call it coaching style. As mentioned, a lot of successful coaches fit into this mold. All I was trying to point out was that not every player is going to get along with a certain coach, work well in collaboration with him, or fit into said coach's game plan. Doesn't mean that they are useless.That player might be able to play well at a different club with a different coach and a different game plan. AFL history is littered with examples of this. The alternative argument presented seems to be that it's all Moloney's fault and that he is now crap. I'm not apportioning blame either way, I just think it's a bit more nuanced than that. Seems to me that Moloney and Neeld were not a good fit together. Best for both parties that he moved on.

Ahhh, the simplistic approach. Always the one and only answer.

Some players just work better under and for different coaches. It's the same in any workplace. Neeld clearly has a dictatorial (probably too harsh a word - authoritarian is probably more accurate), schoolteacher-esque style that seems to work better with the younger players than the older players (unsurprisingly). Combined with the LG clean out, it's not surprising that most reports of player dissatisfaction this year revolved around the older players. Reading between the lines, it seems that he and Moloney must have had some harsh words early in the season and those burnt bridges weren't fully repaired. Doesn't mean he is a bad (or good) coach - I think it's way too early to make that call - but he certainly has a distinct style. He is more of a Parkin than a Roos. Matthew Knights did a similar thing at Essendon - he famously dressed down Dustin Fletcher in front of the entire group and lost the respect of a lot of the senior playing group (Fletcher, while not untouchable of course, is a bit of a father figure over there and by all accounts Knights went way over the top just to set an example which didn't go down well). It didn't work there, but this kind of coaching might be exactly what the younger Dees need (the coaching group and admin have pretty clearly indicated that developing the younger players is far and away the number one priority and the older players have to adapt or clear out - fair enough too - and Moloney was unable or unwilling to do this and so chose the latter option). Only time will tell. But anyway, I think that's one of the great things about FAgency: players now have a say in finding the coach they can work best with now, as well as vice versa.

This morning I thought of another couple of potential problems with this system: 1. It creates further incentives for tanking, something that we can all agree is not needed. If you're a team that's on the slide, and you know that your star player is going to head off in search of success at the end of the year, you have an incentive to fall as far as possible in order that you are awarded the highest possible compensation pick after your natural first round selection. The incentive to tank is almost doubled. You also almost have an incentive to encourage that player to leave in FA. You don't want to keep them because you don't want to pay big money to a player while you're languishing at the bottom of the ladder - you'd rather they move on because then you get the benefit of the high draft pick. This is not good for the game. 2. It produces completely different results for the same player depending on their team. Buddy leaving top of the ladder hawthorn would be worth pick 19. Buddy leaving bottom rung Melbourne would be worth pick 3. That is a gigantic gap in terms of the quality of the pick awarded.

Yes, but their systems are so dissimilar to ours that I don't consider them in the same league. I must admit I have only a superficial knowledge of baseball, but I know the NFL system fairly well. I don't want to get into the intricacies of it all, but I'm going to generalise and say that the NFL/MLB systems are complex, based on a well defined and publicised criteria and designed to minimise the impact on other teams. You may be aware the that highest possible compensation pick that you can get from the NFL draft compensation is an end of 3rd round pick. In a roughly 250 strong draft, you're looking at pick 95 (highest pick ever awarded was to Oakland this year at 95 IIRC). That's about 40% of the way through the draft. Brendon Goddard is mooted to get the saints pick 13 in a roughly 90 player draft. That's in the top 15% of picks in the very first season of the compensation system to a mid table team for a player that a lot of people don't think is that good. Picks per player lost would be even worse, in my opinion. The draft order would be so convoluted and so many teams would be shunted around that the only people who knew where there club truly stood would be list managers. Supporters would have no certainty. Certainly, if they are going to retain a compensatory model, though, they need a far more precise, transparent and speedy system for making compensation picks known. I don't understand why St Kilda "deserve" anything for Goddard. Every FA or RFA has given their club 8 years of their lives. St Kilda got some very good football from Goddard and nearly won a premiership. If they choose not to resign him at his adjudged market value, it is their decision and their loss. Of course the Hawks would have to finish down the bottom to get a high pick. Teams fall from grace at a fairly meteoric rate all the time. St Kilda was predicted to be a cellar dweller this year by many, despite still having a few stars around. And what if these stars decide to leave because they don't want to be part of a rebuilding project? Say the Saints had finished 15th this year. As a first band player, the Goddard pick would presumably slot in right after St Kildas natural first selection in the draft. So what happens to the team that originally pinned their hopes on the high draft pick? They get shafted. Their fans feel cheated. Or does the AFL instead choose to use their "discretion" in deciding that this would be an "anomalous result" and say that they are only giving the Saints pick 10? St Kilda fans feel cheated. The fans of the team that originally had pick 10 feel cheated as well. Everyone ends up hating the AFL and accusing them of bias one way or another. I think its an issue right now, or I wouldn't have brought it up. This year people are still getting used to this system and don't seem to have quite worked out how unfair it is on other clubs. People won't get too upset about going from pick 13 to pick 14. Also the picks haven't actually been released yet. The reaction will be very different when a team (also, presumably, a "lowly" team who really needs the pick) gets pushed from pick 4 to pick 5 and can't take that KPF everyone has been raving about. Legislating retrospectively is a very poor approach to anything and I'm surprised that you seem to be suggesting it. It's very obvious that these issues have the potential to crop up. Better to fix the system as soon as possible, before something goes wrong. The top rounds have by far the most impact on a team's success. If we are going to go with this system, then they should be the ones that are protected, a la the NFL.

RE the compensation system. I believe that the FA agency compo system is just a transition measure and will be scrapped by next season. It was just to get supporters used to the whole idea. First of all, it goes completely against what free agency is about (no other FA system that I know of has this kind of measure). It also has the potential to create monumental problems for the AFL. Firstly, as has been mentioned, clubs do not want to recruit any FAs who might cost them a lucrative compensation pick (and the clubs don't know what it is until far too late). This goes against the whole point of the system - to encourage player movement and freedom. Secondly it is unfair on clubs that are below wherever the AFL arbitrarily inserts the pick; clubs that have done nothing to deserve being shunted down the draft order. Hypothetically, if Buddy has a falling out with Clarko in 2013 (not beyond the realm of possibility given their personalities) and decides to leave the Hawks after next year (and the Hawks don't get many or any FAs back to right the ledger) then you would have a hard time arguing that he is not worth at least a top five or even top three draft pick (he would be getting a huge contract wherever he goes). Say there is a massive talent drop off after those first 5 picks. - it's often the case that a draft is relatively top heavy. What happens to the team that originally had pick 5? Do they just get shafted to pick 6 despite having done nothing wrong? Should the AFL take the talent likely to be available with the comp. picks into account when giving them out? Not such an issue when a comp pick is in the teens or later, but if a club gets shunted down the draft order in the top 5 or 10... well there would be hell to pay. It's unworkable and creates too many possibilities for perceptions of bias and conflicts of interest.

Fair enough, well put. I don't really want to argue about that anymore! Everyone is pulling in the same direction here, just using different ropes.

Been trying to think of some way it could related to Moloney going there, but can't. Surely not.

It was the message coming out of the club officially and unofficially all year, as reflected by comments on here. Nice video, love the mature style of argument and comprehension skills that are on display here so far!

Responsibility to themselves not a responsibility to the player, i.e so they get the best return for him in a trade or as comp. pick. I don't think they have a responsibility to the player so that he gets a fatter contract at his next team (although - to be fair - Moloney's new contract has a direct effect on the comp. pick Melbourne will get). Anyway, he's off to Bris now, so we'll see.