Christmas gifts for all: Get tanking issue solved before New Year

It would be a good time for the AFL to finish their investigation and to release their punishment of Melbourne for tanking.  If sanctions are inevitable, December would be the ideal month to make the dees pay.  Neither Melbourne nor the AFL want the tanking issue still in people's minds when the season is about to begin.  And with Melbourne's constant onfield pain, only the most sadistic football supporters want to see them humiliated in public once again.  If they can get it out there now, it might well be all over by Christmas, and other scandals will wash it from the publics mind before the season starts.  And there will be scandals.  

Mark Neeld is right in that the tanking issue will probably not have much affect on the demons playing group as they train through summer.  With the discipline that they commit themselves to football, what player really has time to contemplate what is happening in the boardrooms of the club?  Whether the players suffer from the clubs further loss of credibility or not, they are out of excuses.  Melbourne's 2012 season was dismal.  Some people might remember Neeld's first few months as dees coach last summer, where every second day he was making brave statements about the dees being a tough team to play during his first year.  He even joked about ignoring the advice of media advisors when he honestly answered media questions.  His transparency and availability might have been refreshing then, but as the team sunk from loss to loss, his tough statements looked sad.  This scribe privately wondered if Neeld might have been better to wait for the dees to have some wins before befriending the media sharks.  He certainly learnt the hard way.

Neeld will hopefully be much more quiet this preseason.  Far from talking tough, he will definitely keep expectations low.  Read: when you’re playing in premierships, most sides (have players which) are around about the 100-game mark, and we’re far away from that, so we’ve just got to make sure it’s time spent really well."  Emphasising lack of experience and long term vision is an easy option for a coach, but some supporters have had just about enough of it.  If Neeld continues that train of thought, Melbourne supporters will remember the Bailey years, and the sense of dejavu would be unbearable.  

The tanking issue cannot and will not be used as an excuse.  The AFL hopefully will not take draft picks from the Melbourne.  If it did, the cycle of demon poverty would be amusing, if it wasn't so sad.  After a period of sustained success, call it the Daniher years, the team lost some champions, got a new coach, and went downhill very quickly.  At that time, it was the done thing, and many a famous club accepted the harsh reality of failure as a the first step to success.  Supporters did too.  High draft picks were seen as the best, if not only, way of getting back to the top.  The priority draft pick was an incentive to lose.  Melbourne did just that, contriving to win less than five games and getting said draft pick.  It was, cynically put, exploitation of a flawed system. And if players still tried their best at every contest, then surely it was legal.  But in a cruel twist, the player Melbourne lost so hard to win was taken from them by another 'playing god' flaw in the system, namely salary cap exceptions allowed GWS.  The draft picks have not brought success to Melbourne, quite the opposite, but still the demons will have to answer for tanking during that fateful year.  If Melbourne were successful, resentment would be rife, and the punishment for the tanking years would be harsh.  Because they are not, let's hope the punishment is reasonable.    

Because Melbourne, in contriving to lose games, have punished themselves to a far greater degree than any administrator could do.  They have disappointed supporters much more than simple on-field incompetence could ever do.  They have almost destroyed the faith of long term fans who wonder now if the club has any heart at all.  In an age of obsession with club culture, the tanking administrators have done more damage than a busload of drug addled players could do.  Forget the long suffering supporters.  Think about the players who were part of that dismal season. 

Players like Brad Green, Cameron Bruce and James McDonald had played in a Grand Final in 2000.  They were there when the dees went all the way to the last Saturday in September.  And then, as their careers were coming to an end, they were there to witness orchestrated losses.  Bruce left as soon as he could.  McDonald was mercilessly forced to retire, even though he was the captain and still a top 5 player and the heart and soul of the team.  Green hung around for a few more years of disaster, shafted out of the captaincy for two kids.  Now the connection with the most recent period of success is lost, and current players have no one to look to for leadership.    

Thankfully, Sydney has won the flag.  The idea that you MUST have top 5 draft picks to get to the top 5 a few years later has now been debunked.  There are many ways to win a flag, and hopefully no team will be given reason to lose a game again.  When Jimmy Stynes died last year, most demons fans thought the team would come alive out of pure passion.  They didn't.  The time for talk of the future is well over.  Neeld must put up or shut up and leave.  If he can't find ways to win games and be competitive in losing games this season then he can tell his story walking.  Melbourne have 11 players who have played over 80 games. Add to this Chris Dawes, captains Trengove and Grimes, and previous first pick Watts, and the whole looking to the future card looks a little bit weak. 

Summer in Suburbia can be a lonesome time: Young Men in Australia

“It is a cliche to say this, but one of Australia's greatest problems is that young men drink too much, take too many drugs, drive recklessly, break the law, disrespect women, act violently and harbour depressive tendencies.” Caroline Wilson, Nov 24, 2012 

The definition of Cliché: a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse, as sadder but wiser, or strong as an ox. 

Stories about football in a summer newspaper most likely drift through to the keeper with minimum interest from the batsman. Tired fans, instinctually drawn to a football headline, might find themselves at first interested but then disheartened, particularly in November and December. Perhaps this lethargy comes from the heat and the slow silence of suburbia; or the gentle hum of cricket commentary in the background. Or more likely it comes from the sad fact that round one is so far away, distant enough to be almost unreal. And so it seems that attempts to keep AFL in the public consciousness throughout the warmer months are doomed to fail. 

 Is there is a clear strategy from AFL headquarters to maintain media coverage of football during summer? There seems to be considerably more articles appearing during cricket season than usual. This relentless self-promotion and needless attack on ‘rival codes’ might even backfire, as many AFL fans, like James Pattinson, need an enforced rest from the game, whether they admit it or not. Journalists, just like the players, need a break, and a chance to realise the true triviality of a sport and industry that dominates their life and is their livelihood.

The New Football Lexicon - April 1 2011

Snide comments from my fan base aside, I always said Round 1 would provide the inspiration to get leather poisoning back on track. Now the real stuff has started and the yawn-fest NAB cup can be consigned to the blurry drunken memory that was another unsatisfying February. Pre-season form means squat and I could find stats to back me up if I need but I won't.

Histories great philosophers always preferred thoughts over numbers. Sadly, footballs respected thinkers (with some notable exceptions) prefer the safety and certainty of statistics over the lucid and infinitely variable sea that is football thought. Such commentators tirelessly grab at the stats sheet in a useless attempt to make sense of the chaos that they view. Their conclusions are, invariably, baseless, but still they insist on feeding us. For this lamentable stats-based football analysis we have Dream Team and it's followers to blame. As a non Dream Team/Supercoach player and a football thinker of high intelligence, I am constantly offended and not a little bit shitted by networks constant stream of Dream Team scores. That Mitch Robinson was rated amongst the Blues' best for his numbers on Friday night is proof that commentators mainly rate players on statistics. Cotchin overlooked as Richmond's best is further evidence. All commentators bring some bias into their views of games (my bias and dislike of Robinson is hereby disclosed) but using statistics as a way to objectively assess a game is even more wrong.

The bias of commentators and umpires towards Carlton legend/messiah captain Judd is becoming more obvious and irritating season by season His game was alright on Friday night but not nearly worth the praise he received from commentators. One broadcaster gushed at Judd's massive impact despite the fact Juddy had just come on after four minutes on the bench, which his co-commentator had mentioned. Let's not speak of the first name basis Chris and the umpires are on, safe to say that he will definitely poll Brownlow votes in Round 1. Australian football is a riveting game, albeit quite hard to understand at times. If a new viewer is not completely confused by the rules and strategies of the game we should be thankful that some football wordsmiths are doing their utmost to destroy said viewers braincells with a new football lexicon. It is great that every season coaches players and commentators come up with new words to describe the new aspects of the sport. Awesome football commentator but fast becoming over exposed all round good bloke Tom Harley has time and again proven he is not just a pretty face with his cutting analysis and advanced use of the English language. Harley introduced a blitz goal, which I gather means a goal scored very fast, like a blitzkrieg, but with a footy and on the g. He also mentioned ballistic football, which I gather means players are going ballistic on the ground and things are getting messy, like when you mix coke, pills, jager and Viagra. You know it.