rumpole

It would be ludicrous to compare McLean with six year's experience to Gysberts who has yet to play a game. Despite that the Gysberts I saw yesterday is every chance of making a good AFL player.

Sticks has handed out his punishments to Houlihan, Walker and Betts but it looks like the Levi Casboult incident has been conveniently swept under the carpet. Nicely done Blues. Now all you have to do is get past Demetriou and you're home safe.

So Mr. Spacey, you would attribute Melbourne's low injury rate over the pre season to date to random good luck or good preparation/maintenance/management etc?

One of the club's biggest and most active supporter groups are the Devil's Advocates. They might have something to say about you sir!

I'm at the Mates of Melbourne function at the MCG and they have a tipping competition to name our four selections and guess what? There's no ball.

Fascinating. Truly fascinating!

The equation might have changed but it's still possible that we could take all three in the draft with us being largely in control of the decision making process. I believe that despite Ball's pig headed attitude up to date including his refusal to meet the club, it would be in his best interests to take a moment and reconsider his position. He has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by meeting the Demons. Firstly, Dean Bailey has already told the world that if Ball told him to his face that he didn't want to come to the club then it would be a short meeting and yet Ball hasn't taken up the challenge. He knows exactly what he has to do to ensure that the Demons don't select him with pick 18 and yet he's baulked at the opportunity. I guess it tells us one thing and that is he is not the leader we expected him to be. Secondly, despite the low esteem in which Ball appears to hold our club, it's about time he opened up his eyes. Since the beginning of the off-season Melbourne has been receiving favourable publicity by the bucketload - even more than Collingwood where all a player has to do is break wind in public and it's on the front and back pages of the newspapers. We're in the news almost on a daily basis whether it be speculation on our draft picks and the way we utilized the new mature age rookie rules to maximize the number of selections available, Liam and Jimmy in the red centre, our upgraded facilities, Joel Macdonald as likely PSD selection and now the venture into China involving us playing an international end of season exhibition fixture in Shanghai. Talk to most people about our club and they understand that our future's bright. Ball doesn't have to want to be a part of our future but by not even giving us the courtesy of a brief chat he might live to regret his actions. I don't understand however, why he's so reluctant to make eyeball contact with the people in our club. Besides, he should be kind to people as he might already be on the way down.

To the Ball family and Collingwood. Be careful what you wish for. The prodigal son is heading possibly for an interstate destination and if nobody takes him ahead of pick 30 on draft day then he will come at great cost to a club in the last uncompromised draft and step into Antony Rocca's shoes. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Good luck to the young fella. Small body, big heart. Hope he gets picked up on some club's list.

Just a second. Isn't the owner of the Gold Coast soccer club bad mouthing the new AFL GC17 franchise and doing his level best to stop it from getting off the ground? Stuff FIFA and stuff soccer. They can all FO as far as I care!

not interest unless related to Johnny

All of the talk has been about the so-called regular season fixture but I'm just wondering if the AFL is going to screw us over again with the NAB Cup programme. The last two years we've been drawn away to the reigning premiers in the opening NAB Cup round. We've been sent to Darwin, Adelaide & Cairns. At a time when clubs are working their butts off to build up memberships it would be nice if we could get a pre season cup game in Melbourne. Is it too much to ask?

Am I right in saying that if we want to use draft picks 1, 2, 11, 18, 34 and PSD 1 then we will have to delist two out of the following four uncontracted players - Bartram, Buckley, Cheney and McNamara and also retain the lieks of Spencer and Valenti as 3rd year rookies and McKenzie as a second year rookie?

Maybe he means Rod Stewart?

Verbal diarrhea

As long as one of those three clubs is not Melbourne I'll be very happy. I find it incredible that the captain of a team could come out on the eve of trade week and make a pronouncement that Fevola is not welcome there. Nick Maxwell either had the blessing of his club to say those things or he's very stupid. Usually, it's the football department and recruiting people who have a say and not a player or even the club president for that matter.

Good stuff. Look forward to more over the trades.

That's exactly what Essendon scored against our 10.9 in the 1948 Grand Final draw. We flogged them in the replay!

Just wondering if the other clubs with alignments to AFL clubs have as much trouble getting players from those teams to play at finals time.

A fifth to Jamar. Bless my soul!

Snap goal to Betts and they're 27 points up halfway through the third. This is going to be a high scorer!

4 to Jamar! We're closing in on them.

It's a real problem and something that has to be investigated. It looks very much like we have 20 fit players at half time in the second last game with only 2 or 3 available for Casey including Paul Wheatley who's starting in the twos and is probably there just to qualify for the finals. Meanwhile, Collingwood have all bar one or two players available for their two sides this weekend.

Jetta has two and we trail by only 7 points - 6.2.38 to 7.3.45

Blues now 2 goals in front. You can stop chewing the nails.