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If you were doing the exit interviews, what would be a key message that you would want delivered to a particular player? Where would you want them to focus in the off season to improve? Verall: More Fitness and marking, getting to contests to be improved Jefferson: More muscle mass and hit more contests. Howes: More fitness and strength to challenge for a wing spot in 24 (etc) Then there are ones like “enjoy your retirement” to BBB, TMAc, Hibbo, Melk, etc, and ‘enjoy the Harbour views, Grundy” What messages would you give?

I understand we did a football department review at the end of 2020. Or was it 2019? I can't remember exactly.🤔 Nevertheless, I thought that the MFC CEO Gary Pert did an excellent job with that review at the time. My question is, do we need to do another football department review? In some ways, it is also quite healthy to do a review every few years. We definitely need to give the Demons senior coach Simon Goodwin more help and perhaps employ more development coaches. Especially if our football department budget is expanded to the Pre COVID-19 amount. We may or may not need a few new assistant coaches. Especially if we lose Adem Yze to the Richmond senior coach role. A specialist goal kicking coach may also come in handy? I think Mark "Choco" Williams has been brilliant at the Demons. However, we should aim to get more specialist coaches to assist our players. Improving our forwardline connection and our goal kicking accuracy is crucial. However, our overall kicking efficiency around the ground needs to be greatly improved too. I think an internal review is satisfactory. But should it be an external review this time? Anyway, I am keen to hear the opinions of other Melbourne supporters about the suggestion of having a new football department review?

There will be enough sad/brutal (but accurate) 'three word' summary posts for 2019 (mine is 'we went backwards'), so to keep us in good spirits for what should be a better year (it has to, right!?), I thought I'd focus on some of the positives (it shouldn't be hard to list them!) What went right? What do we salvage from the wreck of 2019?? For me: - Another fantastic year from Maxxy. I know the commentators gush over Grundy, but we have the #1 ruckman, no questions. True leadership material, hopefully he figures more in this regard next year. - Fritta (who was finally played in the right spot) - Salem was a constant out back, and needs to be utilised better next year. We could do with his foot skills further up the ground. - I know his season was interrupted, mostly his own fault, but May will be a huge asset. He's tough, reads the play well and can lead from out back. He just needs a good off season to get his body right. - Petracca showed glimpses towards the end of the season. He just needs to let loose in 2020.

There is an idea from Daniel Kahneman (Behavioural Economics) that we evaluate an experience on the ‘peak-end effect’. That is, we are hopeless at assessing the full season rationally, and instead take our feeling from the season by the peak experience (good or bad) and the end experience. We all know what was the ‘end’ experience. It was disappointing, and a definite lowlight to leave us all feeling a bit worse about the journey the club took us on this year. However, what was your ‘peak’ experience for the year? What was the intense emotional moment (good or bad) that shapes the way you saw our year. Here are 3 of mine: The smashing of the crows in Alice. Man, what a performance. The Geelong final win. Probably my peak emotional experience and an absolute beauty. And #3 was the win over WCE that got us there. (My peak negative was the Geelong game with the loss after the siren). What was yours?

2012: THE YEAR THAT WAS by Whispering Jack The great author and social critic Charles Dickens opened his epic novel A Tale of Two Cities in this way: The words ring loud and strong as I sit and ponder over a year whose end is almost upon us. More tough times for the club that founded the game and once ruled it, but has more recently perched uneasily on the tumbril heading for the guillotine while up there, in that far away city whose inhabitants barely care, the usurper reigns. The early optimism ever-present at the dawn of a season seemed justified in the very early days of Mark Neeld's AFL coaching career. On the first Saturday in March, his Demons overcame the Magpies by 9 points at Etihad Stadium. Despite the format and the experimental nature of those games, there was encouragement to be gained from the way they went about things that night but alas, it was short-lived and provided little more than a passing tinge of a promise of better things to come. The illusion was shattered within days when star forward Liam Jurrah, recuperating from a wrist injury, was arrested on charges relating to an alleged machete attack in an encampment in Alice Springs. The case became a complex saga with twists and turns that tormented the player, his community and his football club until he walked out late in the season leaving the beautiful story of his journey from Yuendumu to the big city in tatters. The end was an amicable divorce and in most years, his story would have been a mere distraction but in 2012, it was simply a distraction within a nest of distractions and deep wounds. There was much more to come. Two days after the breaking of the news about Jurrah, on the second Saturday in March, Hawthorn slaughtered Melbourne in the next NAB Cup game. The magical rebirth was over and, less than a week later, they lost in Adelaide to a less than well-respected Port Adelaide combination. The injuries were coming and the form was suddenly worse than poor. On 20 March, the iconic Jim Stynes, who had only recently stood down as club chairman, died at the young age of 45. A week later, he was buried at a state funeral held at St Paul's Cathedral, honoured by thousands including his players proudly wearing their red and blue blazers. On 31 March, the season proper began. At the MCG, a listless Melbourne succumbed in the heat by 41 points to the unfancied Brisbane Lions and suddenly, the club was under attack with the vultures in the media circling. The coach was less than convincing in post-match interviews, the attendance of the players at Stynes' funeral so close to the start of the season was now scoffed at and the stirrers became more and more vicious in their contempt of the club as the defeats came and the performances tended towards the insipid. Now, Melbourne was easy prey; fodder for all manner of opportunists with various agendas, some hidden and others kept deep below the surface. The new coach was falsely accused of discriminating against his indigenous players. The slur was traced to the AFL's community engagement manager Jason Mifsud who apologised to Neeld and offered his resignation but AFL chief Andrew Demetriou refused to accept it. Mifsud remains in his employment to this very day despite clear breaches of trust and dishonesty. The mystery remains as to the true origin of the allegations and as to whether parties other than Mifsud were behind them, for the controversy opened up more doors for the club's detractors who used it to question the manner of Neeld's appointment. Has a young coach ever in the history of the game been exposed more to the media blowtorch, much of it without justification, than this man? Worse was to come with the revelations of racist and sexist posts on the Facebook page of the CEO of the club's major sponsor Energy Watch. The club acted swiftly and decisively to sever ties with Energy Watch but the usual suspects were swifter in sinking more boots into the hapless Demons who admittedly did manage to cover most of the lost ground by securing Webjet and Opel as sponsors. The season dragged on, the injuries, the poor form and the defeats got worse amid a few dim rays of light amid the gloom. Nathan Jones was indefatigable, recruit Mitch Clark a revelation at full forward and some of the youngsters were showing good signs. After nine straight losses, the Demons had a night out at the MCG and finally broke the ice to beat the Bombers but the injury toll continued to mount. Clark's foot surgery was a major blow and the list of players injured never went below a dozen in number during the second half of 2012. The inevitable result was that wins were even harder to come by and the season's total of four victories consisted of three over new franchise teams, GWS and the Gold Coast, as well as that Round 10 upset over Essendon. Then came the thunderbolt known as the "tanking affair" which famously opened with suggestions by former player Brock McLean on the Fox Footy Channel that "you would have to be blind Freddy" not to realise that winning was less of a priority for the Demons than draft picks in his last season so he left to go to Carlton of all clubs. The Blues had three number one draft picks courtesy of the system including Matthew Kreuzer who was secured after a spectacular eleven game end of season losing streak that culminated in the farcical Kreuzer Cup and which is referred to these days in some circles as the "grand slam of tanking" but all this was missed by the panel of three supposedly wise inquisitors who were so lost for words that they failed to ask the glaringly obvious, leaving many suspecting that McLean was a mere patsy set up to embarrass his old club (or more precisely, certain officials of his old club). The politics behind the McLean revelations was also lost on the AFL's (now departed) Adrian Anderson who hastily launched a 5½ month long inquisition which drew to a close late in the year and out of which no charges have been laid to date. The enquiry was discriminatory in that it ignored other clubs whose own activities have been queried on the subject over a period of a decade and was confined to Melbourne and Melbourne alone. Incredibly, one of the club's detractors was former Chairman Paul Gardner who went public with this massive toe poke to the head, "I knew what they were doing and why they were doing it, but I didn't have to watch it any more." Information leaked to the media resulted in a storm of controversy in early November with an inflammatory and damning editorial knitted together by Melbourne Age chief football writer Caroline "Madame Defarge" Wilson and this led to a statement by President Don McLardy that the club would use every resource available to defend the integrity of the Melbourne Football Club. Ray Finkelstein, a prominent QC and former judge was appointed to handle the clubs defence. There have been suggestions that the possibility of a sanction against Melbourne or some of its officials but in the absence of similarly prolonged and through investigations of other clubs also suspected of tanking but not investigated, the AFL's integrity would be left in tatters carrying the smell of corruption. The saga is set to play itself out next month amid suggestions that face-saving deals will be done but I will leave further comment to Herald Sun journalist Warwick Green who recently wrote: The outcome of the enquiry will not be the end of the matter for the Melbourne Football Club. The board which has shown considerable strength and unity over a trying period still needs to deal with the core of the political maelstrom and the antipathy towards it from malcontents and disaffected supporters and from within certain segments of the media. These things are damaging and cannot be easily dealt with but they reflect deep-seated grievances and quarrels that have tracked the club through almost fifty years of disquiet that have destroyed many careers and good people and have held back its resurrection. At the other end of the spectrum, Sydney upset Hawthorn in a memorable grand final and, for the second time in a decade, the premiership cup went north while the oldest football club in the world remained in a state of disarray. We need to aspire to their level of solidarity, calm and experience within our ranks if we are to attain success. It was only when the playing season was over that we could experience some better times. Nathan Jones was a worthy winner of the Keith "Bluey" Truscott Memorial Trophy in recognition of him lifting his game to a point where a little more improvement next year will see him at the level of the elite, Jeremy Howe took Mark of the Year after amassing numerous nominations at the same time demonstrating that he's more than just a spring heeled Jack while the two Jacks, Grimes and Trengove had the most difficult of initiations into the world of AFL captaincy that will hold them in good stead in the years to come. Mitch Clark stuck it right up his critics with aplomb and he will be back while young Tom McDonald showed sufficient quality as a defender to warrant some striking list decisions made by the club in terms of its future defensive structure. The list changes effected in the last quarter of the calendar year was breathtaking in breadth and scope. We saw fifteen players gone including former captain and club stalwart Brad Green, Jared Rivers, Brent Moloney, Matthew Bate and some others who were good servants of the club but it was time for change. They were replaced by an eclectic mix of young and old in a sign that the football department was willing to take the steps necessary to bring about the best of times for an ailing club. The newcomers will be among the trailblazers as the team named for this great city begins its revival. Names like Viney, Dawes, Toumpas and next year Hogan will help change things forever, bringing to mind the theme of resurrection in these words, among the last to come from the unfortunate man who bears the name "Sydney" in Dickens' great tale:

2012: THE YEAR THAT WAS by Whispering Jack The great author and social critic Charles Dickens opened his epic novel A Tale of Two Cities in this way: The words ring loud and strong as I sit and ponder over a year whose end is almost upon us. More tough times for the club that founded the game and once ruled it, but has more recently perched uneasily on the tumbril heading for the guillotine while up there, in that far away city whose inhabitants barely care, the usurper reigns. The early optimism ever-present at the dawn of a season seemed justified in the very early days of Mark Neeld's AFL coaching career. On the first Saturday in March, his Demons overcame the Magpies by 9 points at Etihad Stadium. Despite the format and the experimental nature of those games, there was encouragement to be gained from the way they went about things that night but alas, it was short-lived and provided little more than a passing tinge of a promise of better things to come. The illusion was shattered within days when star forward Liam Jurrah, recuperating from a wrist injury, was arrested on charges relating to an alleged machete attack in an encampment in Alice Springs. The case became a complex saga with twists and turns that tormented the player, his community and his football club until he walked out late in the season leaving the beautiful story of his journey from Yuendumu to the big city in tatters. The end was an amicable divorce and in most years, his story would have been a mere distraction but in 2012, it was simply a distraction within a nest of distractions and deep wounds. There was much more to come. Two days after the breaking of the news about Jurrah, on the second Saturday in March, Hawthorn slaughtered Melbourne in the next NAB Cup game. The magical rebirth was over and, less than a week later, they lost in Adelaide to a less than well-respected Port Adelaide combination. The injuries were coming and the form was suddenly worse than poor. On 20 March, the iconic Jim Stynes, who had only recently stood down as club chairman, died at the young age of 45. A week later, he was buried at a state funeral held at St Paul's Cathedral, honoured by thousands including his players proudly wearing their red and blue blazers. On 31 March, the season proper began. At the MCG, a listless Melbourne succumbed in the heat by 41 points to the unfancied Brisbane Lions and suddenly, the club was under attack with the vultures in the media circling. The coach was less than convincing in post-match interviews, the attendance of the players at Stynes' funeral so close to the start of the season was now scoffed at and the stirrers became more and more vicious in their contempt of the club as the defeats came and the performances tended towards the insipid. Now, Melbourne was easy prey; fodder for all manner of opportunists with various agendas, some hidden and others kept deep below the surface. The new coach was falsely accused of discriminating against his indigenous players. The slur was traced to the AFL's community engagement manager Jason Mifsud who apologised to Neeld and offered his resignation but AFL chief Andrew Demetriou refused to accept it. Mifsud remains in his employment to this very day despite clear breaches of trust and dishonesty. The mystery remains as to the true origin of the allegations and as to whether parties other than Mifsud were behind them, for the controversy opened up more doors for the club's detractors who used it to question the manner of Neeld's appointment. Has a young coach ever in the history of the game been exposed more to the media blowtorch, much of it without justification, than this man? Worse was to come with the revelations of racist and sexist posts on the Facebook page of the CEO of the club's major sponsor Energy Watch. The club acted swiftly and decisively to sever ties with Energy Watch but the usual suspects were swifter in sinking more boots into the hapless Demons who admittedly did manage to cover most of the lost ground by securing Webjet and Opel as sponsors. The season dragged on, the injuries, the poor form and the defeats got worse amid a few dim rays of light amid the gloom. Nathan Jones was indefatigable, recruit Mitch Clark a revelation at full forward and some of the youngsters were showing good signs. After nine straight losses, the Demons had a night out at the MCG and finally broke the ice to beat the Bombers but the injury toll continued to mount. Clark's foot surgery was a major blow and the list of players injured never went below a dozen in number during the second half of 2012. The inevitable result was that wins were even harder to come by and the season's total of four victories consisted of three over new franchise teams, GWS and the Gold Coast, as well as that Round 10 upset over Essendon. Then came the thunderbolt known as the "tanking affair" which famously opened with suggestions by former player Brock McLean on the Fox Footy Channel that "you would have to be blind Freddy" not to realise that winning was less of a priority for the Demons than draft picks in his last season so he left to go to Carlton of all clubs. The Blues had three number one draft picks courtesy of the system including Matthew Kreuzer who was secured after a spectacular eleven game end of season losing streak that culminated in the farcical Kreuzer Cup and which is referred to these days in some circles as the "grand slam of tanking" but all this was missed by the panel of three supposedly wise inquisitors who were so lost for words that they failed to ask the glaringly obvious, leaving many suspecting that McLean was a mere patsy set up to embarrass his old club (or more precisely, certain officials of his old club). The politics behind the McLean revelations was also lost on the AFL's (now departed) Adrian Anderson who hastily launched a 5½ month long inquisition which drew to a close late in the year and out of which no charges have been laid to date. The enquiry was discriminatory in that it ignored other clubs whose own activities have been queried on the subject over a period of a decade and was confined to Melbourne and Melbourne alone. Incredibly, one of the club's detractors was former Chairman Paul Gardner who went public with this massive toe poke to the head, "I knew what they were doing and why they were doing it, but I didn't have to watch it any more." Information leaked to the media resulted in a storm of controversy in early November with an inflammatory and damning editorial knitted together by Melbourne Age chief football writer Caroline "Madame Defarge" Wilson and this led to a statement by President Don McLardy that the club would use every resource available to defend the integrity of the Melbourne Football Club. Ray Finkelstein, a prominent QC and former judge was appointed to handle the clubs defence. There have been suggestions that the possibility of a sanction against Melbourne or some of its officials but in the absence of similarly prolonged and through investigations of other clubs also suspected of tanking but not investigated, the AFL's integrity would be left in tatters carrying the smell of corruption. The saga is set to play itself out next month amid suggestions that face-saving deals will be done but I will leave further comment to Herald Sun journalist Warwick Green who recently wrote: The outcome of the enquiry will not be the end of the matter for the Melbourne Football Club. The board which has shown considerable strength and unity over a trying period still needs to deal with the core of the political maelstrom and the antipathy towards it from malcontents and disaffected supporters and from within certain segments of the media. These things are damaging and cannot be easily dealt with but they reflect deep-seated grievances and quarrels that have tracked the club through almost fifty years of disquiet that have destroyed many careers and good people and have held back its resurrection. At the other end of the spectrum, Sydney upset Hawthorn in a memorable grand final and, for the second time in a decade, the premiership cup went north while the oldest football club in the world remained in a state of disarray. We need to aspire to their level of solidarity, calm and experience within our ranks if we are to attain success. It was only when the playing season was over that we could experience some better times. Nathan Jones was a worthy winner of the Keith "Bluey" Truscott Memorial Trophy in recognition of him lifting his game to a point where a little more improvement next year will see him at the level of the elite, Jeremy Howe took Mark of the Year after amassing numerous nominations at the same time demonstrating that he's more than just a spring heeled Jack while the two Jacks, Grimes and Trengove had the most difficult of initiations into the world of AFL captaincy that will hold them in good stead in the years to come. Mitch Clark stuck it right up his critics with aplomb and he will be back while young Tom McDonald showed sufficient quality as a defender to warrant some striking list decisions made by the club in terms of its future defensive structure. The list changes effected in the last quarter of the calendar year was breathtaking in breadth and scope. We saw fifteen players gone including former captain and club stalwart Brad Green, Jared Rivers, Brent Moloney, Matthew Bate and some others who were good servants of the club but it was time for change. They were replaced by an eclectic mix of young and old in a sign that the football department was willing to take the steps necessary to bring about the best of times for an ailing club. The newcomers will be among the trailblazers as the team named for this great city begins its revival. Names like Viney, Dawes, Toumpas and next year Hogan will help change things forever, bringing to mind the theme of resurrection in these words, among the last to come from the unfortunate man who bears the name "Sydney" in Dickens' great tale: