Earl Hood

As usual we will have no clear air in which to make a sober judgement. Happens every time, we need a coach and bingo three or four other teams dump their coaches and are in the market! On the upside Voss cn be a candidate for us but really I just laugh everytime we start looking, bigger or better clubs enter the market. It is likely the Dons may be on the look out next week as well as the Lions and then it may be WC, who knows.

Add Voss to the list of potential coaches. We could do worse. Triple premiership player, captain, Brownlow Medalist. You name it, he has done it as a player. As coach he has made mistakes yes but surely you learn from 5 years in the hot seat. Good candidate I say. But let us make a decision soon because everytime we are in the market for a coach, at least 5 other clubs join us and compete for the available talent. It appears to be happening yet again. Could be us, Lions, WC and who else?

Have to agree. We need to be strong on field and OFF FIELD PJ!!! The video indicates this charge is rubbish. There is nothing there at all. The MRP talks about an investigation which I suspect is no more than a review of the GCS medical report. Oh popped shoulder, high impact, must be someone's fault. Again video shows a melee and wrestle. We should have taken this to the tribunal if only to work out the logic of the charge. This is a kid with no priors getting the same time as CB kicking Strauss in the head and who has years of form for all the wrong reasons. Get some G and D MFC!!!

Whoops sorry unless it is Clisby in a tackle, in a melee of six or so other players and someone's shoulder pops out. Someone's been injured so there must be a culprit. Not much video but it must be the closest, identifiable Demon. Clisby your done!

Apparently only Trengove can do a sling tackle, take three weeks for it but since then its been dead. It may look the same but when someone like Cyril does it, it is something that is benign.

Flash was good, created the small defensive forward blueprint that every team now wants to have. But I think Yze and The Whiz are just ahead. Farmer was a freak, if indisciplined at times

Just wondering has anyone received their members "name" guernsey for this weeks game against Freo. I am still waiting for mine.

Gee this made me laugh, great post but it is sad that it is so true. I should be crying. Back on topic, after last weeks train wreck it should be in Davis, Magner, Strauss and maybe Nicholson but no it is Davisand McKenzie. We know what McKenzie can do but what can Magner and Couch do these days?

Let's take it easy on JH and see how he goes next year before we start the hype. I am hopeful but we have been here before.

There is a lot of talk here about our failure to develop our kids and I agree we have not been good at it but I still believe first round picks if you pick the right personalities should have a high level of skills (a given in the first round), be self motivated, confident in their ability and be able to organise their own "development". I think we have just picked too many kids who don't like the physical side of the game. The move from under age to adult can be a big step if you don't have a bit of mongrel aggression in your personality and we have avoided them like the plague, let us be honest. I agree you can't coach guts, you tend to be silly enough to have no fear or you are too sensible to ever un backwards into a pack. We seem to have drafted a large number of sensible people in recent years!

When the AFL commission sits down at the end of the season to look at possible compensation for the MFC train wreck I would like them to look at the bigger picture of equalisation in the competition. The expansion clubs have gone past us already and they still have massive added advantages coming over the next few years thanks to extra first round picks banked from the 17 year old mini drafts and exclusive access to local zones. We have a good case for extra help, perhaps in the form of a mini draft access to 17 year olds that we would be required to on trade for mature players or draft picks. Is this fair, do we deserve this? Maybe not but if the AFL want a more competitive draw they need to look at more than just the odd priority pick here and there. The AFL is currently handing out advantages to clubs like Sydney based on what? And let us remember that free agency is in general, an advantage to the clubs that are in the premiership window so the inequalities will get bigger over time. Hopefully the recent AFL equalisation junket to the US has come back with some enlightened ideas on how to give the lower clubs a leg up.

There is a Different set of rules operating here. Geelong got compensation for GA Junior as we did for Scully under the rules set up for the new clubs rights to raid established clubs. Free agency is a different beast, so far the AFL hasn't offered value for money on the free agents who have moved on. We got stuff all for Maloney and Rivers but maybe because we picked up Byrne? If we had styed out of the free agency trading we my have been better compensated, who knows. But I think the AFL have made it clear that you won't be fully compensated for FA trade losses.

Should we throw a bucket load of cash at Ratten for mid coach? He was good for us once before.

How were we ever going to win this one? It reminded me of Neelds first game for us against Brisbane where there was no way we could win just kicking it high up along thenboundary line. I watched today's game on TV and all we did in the firt half was pick the ball up and kick it long into the forward line. No system, no thinking, no skill, no running. I mean where is the game plan. We could never win this one with Craig's plan. I am thinking Neil Craig may be as much of the problem as Neeld ever was. The two of them together were probably toxic.

Agree absolutely. The AFL has a big problem with the inequalities in the weekly draws. The MFC is an impediment to the competition as PJ has stated. How do we make the competition more equal? It's more than the odd priority pick in my opinion. Yet all the other clubs are adamant that we don't deserve help. It's not about deserving, it's about equalisation, the AFL has been or have given a leg up to all the clubs outside Victoria t some stage to set them up. We can do everything we can to get the off field stuff right and that will be great but it still boils down to the on field cattle to make us competitive and we are still miles off the mark in my opinion. How we got here is history, our uncanny ability to work our way through, what 7 drafts, picking out the duds in the first round. You couldn't do that if you tried but we managed Unfortunately give us a priority pick and I am sure we will stuff that up as well.

I am sure that made all the difference, not that Cameron is 195 cm, highly mobile and a natural forward.

We need some footballers with some grunt as well!!!

I am glad you are not my stockbroker. Trading early first rounders or late second rounders e.g. Toumpas, Watts is not a great way to get ahead. But I agree this playing list sh&ts me big time! Over paid pampered so and so's who will keep burning coaches until something or someone transforms the whole place.

Listened to PJ on SEN on crunch time this morning and he talked about the need for player development on and off the field. Sounded good but then he talked of the need to get the likes of D Brereton down to the club on a part time basis to mentor young Hogan and generally that we haven't been developing the kids. What are the current full time assistants doing then? Leigh Brown, Jade Rawlings? Part time greats to provide guidance might be nice but surely that is not going to turn some of our boys around. I really struggle with this development issue; what more can we do for these kids, full time training regimes, fitness gurus, elite facilities, specialist coaches? What does proper development look like? I am looking for hope, for some realistic answers but I am not hearing them yet. We are putting a lot on a change of coach, I hope that is the answer. But I am really despairing of this playing list, poor skills, no grunt, no passion.

There is a lot of talk about player development and our poor record in this area. Jet Jackson spoke of our failure in this area last night. Can someone spell out exactly what this development looks like? For the past three years we have been at AMMI with all its state of art facilities, we have Dave Misson flogging them, we train every day with numerous assistant specialist coaches. What are we not developing? My simple mind thinks that first round picks should be able to manage their own development as long as they have access to reasonabe training regimes. Later draft selections may need mentoring, specialist training and time to develop and then a specific role to play. Gee wiz we had some great players in the 90's who had to train at Junction Oval with nothing but an oval and some balls to kick. Would Garry Lyon, Nietz, the Ox and Todd Viney not be competitive today because they weren't accessing the elite facilities at AAMI? I don't think so. PJ talked of player development and culture a la Geelong and Sydney as what we need to replicate. The more I look at the elite teams the more I think young player development is optimised when a club has the luxury to play their young guns for 40 or so games in the VFL and then bring them in for a game with a Stevie J, josh Kelly and Joel Selwood playing around them in a winning side. That is positive player development. Interestingly only a few clubs can meet those criteria, the ones that already have a group of hardened, elite champions to show the way. Melbourne does not have those resources and one of our big problems has been our lack of hard arsed, talented, experienced leaders from the Daniher era. Once Neitz retired and we sent Junior packing that was about it. We thought our best option was to draft as much young first round draftees as possible. As we know we drafted a succession of kids who had one thing in common, they all needed and were looking for leadership! No ambitious, confident, physically hard draftees for us just nice, supposedly skilled athletes. We continue to pay the price for these drafting decisions. Neeld pissing off the senior group and then losing the likes of Maloney and Rivers just made things worse.

Did we just hold off breaking our own record of losing from 40 points up in the last quarter against Essendon back in 1993 I think? We were 45 up and all but threw it. Anyway we held on this time but really why is it so hard to get a win around here?

What is it about MFC listed players and poor kicking skills? Can't full time professional footballers learn to kick accurately with some practice and advice. I'm not talking elite kicking for distance, trajectory or precision which some have and others never will Have. I am talking about the ability to pass a ball 20 or 30 meters to a target or at least to the target's advantage.

Great win by the bombers. Great game by Jobe and really the WC fans booing him for peptides takes the cake! This is WC isn't It? Glenn Jackovich, the terminator, Cousins, flatline Fletcher for heavens sake, talk about hypocrisy.

Well there you go I was there for the first 30 minutes or so and I didn't see Lingy over in the bushes. I was basking in the incredible balmy weather riding my bike back home from the city. While I was waiting for training I rode up to the Collingwood setup and it is fantastic, so open with a running track on the outside of the training oval. I can report to the Victorian Goverment that funded Eddies vision of a training facility that is safe for women, that there was one women running around the track. Who knows how many women were running around the tan where there must be any number of deviants just waiting to jump on them. Thank God for Eddie and the Goverments funding of the Lexsus Centre.

It would be nice to get someone signed up sooner rather than later so they can have a good look at the list and have a god idea should go and what type of player we need to bring on the list. The more I listen to what Jet Jackson has to say about restructuring the club, the more I am thinking who coaches is important but not the be all and end all. We need a competent, experienced coach, we don't Need a messiah. There has been a lot more wrong with this club than the coaches and I think PJ's comments point to the total lack of direction in the place that is staggering. I think Choco or Eade or what about Ratten could do the job with good assistant coaches and full support of the FD.