Earl Hood

Mind you, for sheer idiocy surely "p15sing in someone's pocket" has to be the most nonsensical phrase ever invented. Why would anybody think that it's a good thing?

You have reminded me of one of my footy captain coaches who had a habit of coming up to you in the communal club room showers after Thursday night training with an earnest look on his face to talk to you about the coming game and your selection only to realise he was also pissing on your leg! It was his idea of humour. I think he got most of the young blokes at least once. Same thing but I wasn't wearing a pocket at the time.

"It is what it is" Really grinds my gears !!

Haven't heard of "the reality bus" since it hit Neeld when he wasn't looking!

He is a criminal he is such a bad person he doesn't deserve a second chance he deserves to live in jail

Who are you talking about, Ted Bundy? Or who?

Apparently an asylum seekers boat has been intercepted by the RAN and turned back in the last few days, but Indonesia would not accept the boat and its people! Well blow me down. What is going on here? Doesn't Indonesia listen to Tony's simplistic policies; we will stop the boats and turn them back when safe to do so. Well thy are saying you can keep them. And by the way I thought the boats had stopped but we are learning more about multiple boat movements from Jakarta then our own Government about what is really going on.

The obvious question always to ask him was: "Tony where are you turning them back to?". "do you have agreements with our neighbours to take them?" but no one managed to corner him long enough to get an answer or really they never tried too hard.

The fact is slogans don't work with your overseas neighbours that well.

What is the latest Tony Slogan " Here is my bill to lower your bills" delivered in a monotone manner as if we are all imbeciles.

How long can this go on before someone convinces him to actually talk openly to his people.

How anyone - let alone anyone that calls themselves a demons supporter could bag Neita is beyond me. People saying he is Arrogant, Selfish, etc obviously havnt spent more then 1 second with the guy. I've been at the Childrens Hospital many times when my brother was in there for 6 months and he was the most frequent visitor out of any football player I noticed. He would rock up after training sessions still in his training gear and play video games with kids and sit and talk with parents, bring in signed gear for kids. No TV cameras or Jurnos around documenting any of this just out of his on good will.

As for on the football feild, he arguably could be considered to be one of the most courageous captians of his era. He would lead from the front, stand up for team mates and would have a crack 100% of the time even if it meant he would get layed out. Sure he didnt kick as many goals as Lloyd, didnt have the polish or number of brownlow votes as Vossy, Hird, or Bucks. But he bled RED AND BLUE and you knew if he was anywhere near a contest he would try his best to make an impact for his team.

As for compairing Neita and Hogan. If he can play over 300 games, Kick over 600 Goals and lead from the front like #9 did then i think we should count our lucky stars. With there being less then 70 players in the 300 games club and only 53 players in the 500 + Goals Club I think we should tone down the expectations on the kid. Let him play without the weight of expectation and If he only manages 150 games and 300 goals he will still go down as a success.

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Gee I think you may have summed up this thread beautifully. Not much more should be said.

Dawes has been okay. Not terrific by any means.

Hopefully he'll be able to get on the park for most of next year alongside Clark and Hogan and THEN maybe he will be terrific.

I was driving through Richmond today and saw Dawes getting out of his car near Lennox Street. Looked to be moving very smoothly. Just thought I better report in.

The one you have now is perfect. Davros is one of television's great villains and is about to celebrate his 50th anniversary.

Hey what about The Hood??

Love the 9 goals video. 5 minutes in and Eddie is praising Godders for his foot skills. You always knew we were gonna win when Simon Godfrey was hitting targets regularly.

Watching Neitz was great but what stood out was Jeff White dominating the ruck (pre ruck rule changes), our slick mid field, dominating the ball and of course the delivery to Neitz, not always great but he made it so. Oh it has been so long between drinks to see that sort of red and blue play. It is just amazing how inept our mid field has been since 2007 in comparison.

Sabbatical TH. There were only so many ways that I could discuss pick 9. When is the draft by the way?

RTG

While on your sabbatical you would have missed Nasher's thread on What level of football Demondlanders had played? Most of us reported that we coulda been champions of course. VFL/AFL bound if only we had some more talent!

Just wondering what footy you played given your in depth footy knowledge?

So what you're saying is that this is the list? Wow.

RTG where have you been?

Latest news is up to 1400 scientists and technicians jobs will be cut from the CSIRO under Tony's public service cuts. No science minister to put up an arguement in cabinet of course. Welcome to the 21st century and all its challenges that lay ahead. I'm sure an eminent persons group set up by Tony could develop a solution to work through our problems; Barnaby Joyce, Corey Bernardi, Hugh Morgan, David Murray and John Howard to name just a few of the eminent conservative voting members of Australia's Flat Earth Society would be obvious candidates.

I don't want to compare Hogan to Neitz because after starting his career as a CHB Neitz became very much a stay at home leading full forward. Never really was the versatile key forward that I hope Hogan becomes.

Of course if Hogan has an MFC career as good as Neitz I'll be wrapped but I'd like him to be more versatile if possible.

I'd like Hogan to be a mix of Pavlich (movement and skill), Cloke (power) and Riewoldt (work rate) and capable of playing different roles in games.

As for those rankings what a joke. Patton gets 9.2 for size and Hogan 7.8 and the only difference between them is 3cm.

I will take another Neitz anytime. Forget versatility, I will take the pack crashing key forward who kicks goals and scares the shytes out every backman anytime.

That is an insult to Gawn.

FCS, Jamar's output has been VFL standard at best. Roosy for god-sake, don't worry about game plans with Jamar; I just want him to tap the ball and not end up lying on the ground leaving us with a 3 on 4.

Our rucks will sneak forward more under Roos. If Jamar is our no.1 ruck come mid-winter, I'd be very surprised.

As for Clark, over the past 2 years, per game played, he has been the best forward in the comp in relation to quality of delivery. But, I have felt that we were at our best when he pinch-hit in the ruck. He has a presence that Jamar does not have. He gives us a 4 on 4 after the tap.

The other thing Roos will be dead against is "bomb entries" forward; and instead honour the hit-up. Clark isn't that much of a hit-up, if you get my drift.

Oh for a super fit Clark! I see him as much a super ruck rover causing mayhem in the centre square a la Roughie, in between rucking stints and periods up forward. A fit Clark can do all three rolls and drive opposition coaches to distraction (well only if the other 21 players are doing something).

One problem is that I think Norm Smith was still there when Sheedy went down to training in 1965 or 1966 and was dismissed. So I wouldn't be blaming the G&T boys. Odd that he didn't pick up Sheeds potential as a hard arsed centre man to replace Barass just when we needed leadership. I think there were still some decent players running around post 1964 but lacking leadership. I can think of Hassa Mann, Townsend, Johnston, Vagg to name a few. However it would not have stopped the rot over time.

Of course if you have enough money you organise to fly here on a tourist visa and then disappear. You could be fleeing from persecution but the last thing you would do is tick the refugee box on your immigration questionnaire for heavens sake. The illegals are so called queue jumpers with limited resources. If you have the money to fly over the queue, your in.

If I can use the Orchestral analogy, I am hoping our improvement next year will be because P Roos is the AFL equivalent of a virtuoso conductor of an orchestra. He is able to get everyone working in unison, working off the same song sheet, knowing their role and when to put it into use at his cue. Importantly the songsheet must be relevant and it must work, the players have been trained and their instruments are tuned. The members of the orchrester have to be good, well trained professionals but not extraordinary talents, but must be willing to follow the conductors lead for it all to work.

After the worst season by any club by an AFL side where we were abominable, non competitive and what other descriptive words could describe the efforts at times? I would equate Neelds team as what you hear when the orchrester is warming up where there is no cohesive tune just orchestral noise as members play as individuals playing their own tunes to best prepare for the show and ignoring the music sheet.

I am hoping Roos turns this on its head. We have a few new players that may help and hopefully we have a big forward back, fit and playing like he did in 2012. But the big improvement may come from us working as a team, willing to take risks, to attack the ball in the knowledge that team mates will Shepard, make space and present up forward as the conductor demands.

think he wants bontempelli?

his parents are from venice

so he could save the club

if it wasn't for the venetians it would be curtains for all of us

OK I will bite!

What did the Venetians do for us?

I thought it was the Romans.

Sheedy played for Prahran in the VFA which was a breeding ground for the MFC but went to Richmond instead of Melbourne; I never knew why he did.

The Wikipedia on Sheedy says he was invited to MFC but didn't like it and later MFC gave permission to the Tiges to look at him. I think you can say we looked at him and were not interested. Hafey talked about him as the cultural leader at the Tiges who thrived on Tom's extreme physical regimes that gave those teams the edge. He had mongrel and Tom loved him for it.

Our zones were crap, although we got Flower, Healy and a few others and our drafting has been crap.

Scotty Thompson was our best selection, but never became A-grade with us. Outside of Thompson I'd argue that despite his deficiencies Adem Yze has been our best draft pick.

I think it's fair to say that at his best Yze played A-grade years.

I learnt something else last week when I listened to a motivational talk from Tom Hafey. He was listing players who had been rejected at one club but fought on to prove themselves and became champions. He said Kevin Sheedy was rejected by MFC so he must have been in our zone and we went past him.

Didn't Neitz and Schwarz come up through the old Under 19's? Not sure how that worked with the draft in those days but I'd assume we were able to graduate them to our primary list without going through the draft?

Yes they did. I have wondered did our zones finally start to produce some real talent just as zoning came to an end? Lyon, Schwartz and Neitz is not a bad hit rate between 1986 to 1993 for KPP's anyway. MFC were duded in the great equalisation experiment of the 60's that was designed to weaken us and Collingwood and promote the Hawks and others. For the 20 previous years all our zones ever produced of elite status was Robert Flower.

What struck me was the small snippet about Colin Sylvia. I won't say anymore about it but it just speaks volumes of our coach.

Yes I think his comments were code for Col might be part of the problem rather than part of any solutions

Our development has been rubbish. Only a small amount of players under the latter Bailey and Neeld years made any progress. Be it coaching, training standards, psychology or fitness we've been miles off the mark. Not saying Cook would ever had made it but he might have been at least a VFL seniors player at the end of his MFC career.

In the never ending nature versus nurture debate I believe that nurture (development) is important but it can be irrelevant if the nature part is deficient.

When you meet certain levels of ability, self confidence, work ethic and ambition then development can take you further. If you are lacking in basic ability or the want to succeed development wont get you much further.

Sorry Hardtrack I have mistakenly dragged you into my response to BH and co. Sorry about that.

Yes, on that we do agree... I just don't believe our responsibility ends with that, that's all; I believe we have a duty of care.

We could send a ocean liner up to Indonesia to cut out the smugglers and take them on board over there. And then process them on board but I don't think you would be happy with that. That is not really a solution but Malcolm Frazier has asked why successive Governments have not worked with our Asian neighbours to establish refugee camps to process these people like we did in the 70's with the Vietnamese diaspora. The fact is we cooperated but we also took a lot of Vietnamese people on board and they have largely added greatly to our society. Why can't we do this again? We once feared the Viets like we now fear Afganies or Iraqies. But largely they turn out to be very like us once they have learnt the lingo and even started to play Aussie Rules.

The thing that I find difficult to deal with you "rusted on Liberal people" is that Malcolm now comes across as a bleading heart lefty. I don't think he has changed that much at all but in the past 25 years we have all been pulled toward the extreme right. And I mean both sides of politics. These boat people however tragic it is for them is not a sovereign border, security issue of national proportions. We do not have a standing army off our shores ready to invade but you could be forgiven for thinking that listening to the shock jocks. And let's face it they are inferring these people from strange places coming in rickety boats are dangerous in some way.

I hear a lot of these sorts of comments, and it makes me wonder what they're expecting the kid to say. "Yeah, nah, look, I was named the AA CHF, my game's perfect. There's nothing I need to work on and if there is, I can't really be bothered working on it anyway"? I expect if they asked the kind of questions Demonlanders wanted, they'd get platitudes and the answers they wanted to hear every single time.

How much can really be taken away from talking to the players? Genuine question. I suppose I don't really have any concept of what gets discussed in these interviews.

If you know what you are looking for you could get a feel for his confidence levels, ambition and leadership abilities. You ask the kid to give examples where he has taken a lead role etc. if you looked at his CV you would be looking to see if he had captained most of his junior sides. Is he a leader or a follower. These are attributes Todd Viney has spoken about in draft selections. If the kid has not got these attributes, he better have some other big positives going for him.

The idea is that he does most of the talking, you listen. You soon get an idea of a kids confidence and maturity.

Of course you are right because BP would not know what he should be looking for in a kid.