Spirit of '87

Reminds you of Andy Lovell with darker hair? Hard to tell.

That stat comes up often, in fact I think it used to be much less than half at one stage - if anything it’s improved over time. Pert’s not the first to suggest that they need to get more MCC members signing for joint MFC membership. The problem is that others at MFC before him, including Neale Daniher when he was coach, have made the same comments. The difficulty, in reality, is to get the remaining tight-arsse MCC members to fork out the additional 80-odd dollars for joint membership, when they can easily just sheepishly ignore the option, still go to Melbourne games in the comfort of the MCC and claim to be Melbourne supporters, while saving themselves some $ as a result. I hope Pert has something concrete in mind that will succeed, where other MFC management before him haven’t been able to in the past.

For all the AFL's talk about protecting the head, the danger of concussion, the head being sacrosanct and effectively banning the bump out of the game, they still just prefer to turn a blind eye to players ducking their head and putting their own head at risk.

So no comment from MFC at this stage? Haven't seen anything in their website yet. Bulldogs and Port have both at least made statements in some form in relation to their players involved.

Yes I agree, although if the contract was only for say two years instead of four, those two seasons may be spent by him looking on from the stands while serving a two year ban. I just can't see why the club would bother with someone of his standard, regardless of the term of his contract - there doesn't appear to be much upside from getting him, but a lot of potential downside. If the club is really considering him, I'm concerned that they've been drawn in by the general local complacency about the WADA outcome, and this apparent local view that the players will either still get off, or only be banned for a few weeks or so.

The WADA hearing outcome will not be swayed by any populist or even popular views, most of which are no doubt uninformed anyway. And if the club really is looking to get him, they could also be taking too complacent a view about that outcome. He's not worth taking that risk of a two year ban for.

Perhaps if we're interpreting what was overheard, they were saying "How (not Howe) good are we, to have landed Dangerfield for just $400,000 a year for the next 5 years.