Cry Babies

[Sarah]

Roylion - my last post on this topic...

You want your club to be successful. You want to retain your good players and you want your club to attract other good players from QLD and elsewhere. You offer many points to justify the AFL's assistance via salary cap etc. that will ensure your club's success. I don't agree that the AFL should offer such assistance; I don't agree that it should offer your club assistance but no similar support to Melbourne clubs. That's my point of view - you are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.

I want my club to be successful. I love my club and I believe it's 'good for football' to have a successful Essendon team in the competition. Once again, this is just my opinion and as a Lions supporter, I'm sure you'll not agree.

So I want my team to do well. I want to bask in the glory of this years Grand Final and the next. You want your team to do well also. You want your team to prosper for your own interests and for the interest of footy in QLD, as you say. Let's move beyond this point.

I don't believe that you or I have more of a right to our team than a North, Bulldog or Saints supporter. I want to enjoy my club's success now but, when this period of success ends, I know that it will be a matter of time before they 'rebuild' and enjoy success again. I want North fans, Bulldog fans etc. to be able savour their current success and be as secure as you and I are, that their team will survive the next stage.

It's interesting that you say you'd also like to see all Melbourne teams remain while making the point that a similar number of teams don't exist in one stat elsewhere in the world. It reminds me the newspaper articles post 1999 Grand Final that went on about North would gain from the victory but were headed with something like 'North's future is still in doubt'. Why should we be concerned about what happens elsewhere? Everything about our game is unique!

I don't subscribe to the theory that we have too many Melbourne clubs. I imagine no supporter of a Melbourne club sees their club as being surplus.

All your arguments defend the right, the need even, for Brisbane etc. to achieve and maintain success. You maintain that the AFL should continue to provide assistance so that the AFL can grow and prosper in states that don't traditionally follow AFL.

I argue simply that ALL clubs, not just yours and mine, have the right to exist. I argue that the AFL should be as respectful of the rights of Melbourne fans as it is of fans interstate. Brisbane fans' major worry is that they do not get to see their team often enough on television. Some Melbourne fans worry that, down the track, they won't get to see their team at all!

Just one other thing, you've stated that some Melbourne clubs (such as Hawthorn) have received assistance. I believe the clubs have been offered a degree of compensation - not assistance as is offered to Brisbane, Swans etc. Hawthorn, for example, have been severley affected by the closure of their home, Waverley. Membership's suffered and it's expected that match attendences will also be affected. The AFL's 'assistance' will not ensure them sucess as does the assistance given to your club, the Swans etc.

It won't help them attract new members, new players or help keep current players. It will help them gain some ground lost by the move from Waverley - a move that Hawthorn (and many others) were against. (Please let's not get into the Waverley debate, this is just to help demonstrate my point!).

On another more selfish note, I look forward to Essendon pulverising all teams, including yours and those who's existance I defend.

 

[Don]

Factual inaacuraccy Matthew Primus is a Victorian originally recruited by Geelong who sacked him because they didn't think he was good enbough.

 

[Mister]

Sara I'm not convinced your an essendon fan.

Roylion if another team had gone to Brisbane and Fitzroy were still Fitzroy, would you honestly be arguing the need for Brisbane to get what they get for the reasons you now give? And would you be prepared to sacrifice your team because there are to many teams in melbourne?

 

[sainter]

I have no problem whatsoever with the AFL allowing Sydney and Brisbane to draft one local player each year. This decision will go along way to promoting the game in New South Wales and Queensland

I just found it a little ironic that the Swans had the 3 of the first 8 picks in the 1998 National Draft and chose 2 players from SA and I can't remember the third of the top of my head. Our first pick wasn't until 11 where we were fortunate enough to snap up Lenny Hayes from the NSW/ACT Rams via Pennant Hills. He was the B & F from the u/18 competition and is probably the most exciting youngster that we have had for many years. We also picked up Max Hudghton from West Brisbane.

My point is that sometimes these clubs are overlooking good quality youngsters yet are complaining when their VIC/SA/WA draft picks are homesick.

 

[sandra]

Good point. Brisbane have overlooked a heap of local players. Clint Bizzell, Hamish Simpson, Max Hugdton.

 

[Roylion]

My last post on this topic as well. Even when Fitzroy was in the competition, I believed that the 'Swans' and the 'Bears' were entitled to some assistance, because they alone out of all the 16 AFL clubs were in non Aussie Rules football states. It's "good for football" to establish Aussie Rules as the number one spectator and participative sport in Australia, by making sure there are COMPETITIVE AFL sides in NSW and/or Queensland. However I don't think any team, including Brisbane, Essendon, the Swans...whoever... should have a automatic mortgage on success.

The salary cap extension goes a small way into bringing Brisbane and Sydney up to the standard of all the other AFL clubs in football states. The sheer volume of high-quality players being raised and developed in WA, SA and Victoria far outweighs the volume of good quality players coming from Qld or NSW and to be successful these clubs HAVE to recruit actively from these states. West Coast have an active policy of recruiting as many players from their state as possible, as does Port Adelaide. They can afford to recruit the type of player for the structure of their team, because the talent is often there. If not then they recruit outside their state. In 1999 West Coast had only 9 of their 40 man team from outside Western Australia.

In Queensland and NSW the talent is not there in any great numbers, so Sydney and Brisbane are forced to recruit outside their states to remain competitive. The new rookie system means that Brisbane now can look at promising players more closely. All of their rookies for 2000 are from Queensland. However if these rookies are not up to scratch, and many aren't, then to remain competitive they need to look interstate. I'm sure I would rather have Simon Black (WA) over Max Hudgton and Luke Power (Vic) over Clint Bizzell, even if Hudgton and Bizzell were from Queensland.

I'd also like to point out that I loathe the Swans, but in the context of a national competition and the problems of being in a developing state, I still think they are entitled to salary cap assistance and more than what Brisbane gets for a variety of reasons that have been already stated.

Of course I hope all Melbourne-based teams survive..it's just after seeing what happened to my club (Fitzroy), I have my doubts and continued utterances by members of the AFL commission such as Wayne Jackson and Ian Collins do nothing to dispel these doubts. As to what "mister" said, well I've already given up my team. No other supporter of any other team apart from Fitzroy and South Melbourne knows what it is like to lose (to borrow a line from Fitzroy's theme song) "the club we hold so dear".

Also Sarah, I have a feeling that your feelings about protecting other Melbourne clubs from extinction or relocation only occur when you can see Essendon isn't going to be disadvantaged by doing so. I'd bet you'd would be mightily annoyed if the blockbusters games scheduled for the Queen's Birthday Holiday and Anzac Day were taken away from the heavyweights Essendon, Carlton and Collingwood and North Melbourne, Melbourne, Geelong and Western Bulldogs games were scheduled on those holidays instead. Of course, as you and I know, that isn't going to happen for a whole host of reasons and of course secure in that knowledge, you can go on about the injustices made by the AFL towards those struggling Victorian clubs and blame the AFL and the interstate clubs for that. If you (and the AFL) were agreeable to Essendon, Collingwood and Carlton giving up the apparent strangehold on these days for a number of years and support the scheduling of matches such as North Melbourne vs Melbourne at the MCG on the Queen's Birthday Holiday or Geelong vs Western Bulldogs at Colonial and St Kilda vs Hawthorn at the MCG on Anzac Day, well then I would be willing to acknowledge that your statements (and the AFL noises about not wanting to see AFL clubs in Melbourne disappear) are in fact genuine.

Matthew Primus may originally have been a Victorian, but he has spent most of his senior football career in the SANFL and AFL, except for a year at Fitzroy. He was recruited from the SANFL to Fitzroy and I believe his family lives in SA as well and has done for a long time. The only connection with Geelong that I am aware of was that his grandfather was a famous Geelong footballer..... Reg Hickey (?). I always remember Bob Davis going off on TV when Primus was recruited by the Roys, as he believed that Geelong had missed a great opportunity to recruit him themselves. I'm not aware that he was ever on Geelong's senior list (maybe their U-19's when that existed), but if anyone can confirm or deny this please do.

 

[Dave]

Roylion,
I didn't forget anything. Brisbane finished last due to an incredibly poor run with injuries, not because they had a list full of hack and has beens.

Brisbane may well have the highest number of interstate players, but that's not the problem, the problem is they say they can't keep them, which isn't eveidenced by any facts.

"Queensland and NSW are NOT Aussie Rules football states!"

So what? The argument isn't whether they are or aren't, it's that they struggle to retain talented young players from other states, an argumemnt that has NO basis in fact.


"As to the " footy equity" argument, couldn't it also be argued that interstate clubs are disadvanged having to travel the length and breadth of the country for half their games?"

And could it not also be argued that because they travel so often they are in fact better equiped via experience to do so than their melbourne counter parts who may only do so 3 or 5 times a year?

"Victorian clubs like Richmond in 1999, played 17 of their 22 games in Melbourne"

And get true home ground advantage on maybe 5 or 6 ocassions compared to Brisbanes 11. Isn't that to Brisbanes advantage?

"There have been quite a few examples of players leaving ... David Calthorpe..remember him..wanted to return to Victoria and did so"

Because he couldn't get a game, not because he wanted to "come home".

...

I'd say Sarah summed this up fairly well. The concessions are ok because you want to see your team successful, just as I'd like to see mine successful.

 

[Kanga]

Dave, my son....Calthorpe left Brisbane because he was home-sick. His attitude was stuffed because he didn't wanna play there. That's why he didn't get a game. Now he's home, he wants to play and he'll probably get a regular game. Go Roos!

 

[Longjohn]

How right was I?

Brisbane supporters must be the biggest cry babies in the league, or we could say spoilt little children. They don't realise when they are on a good wicket.

 

[Batman]

Interesting debate...but holy Batsh*t LongJohn, is that the best you can come up with?!!!! Crybabies? Little children? Perhaps you should go up to Brisbane and join them. Going on the incisive, witty, informed comments you've come up with on this topic...you'd certainly fit in. Go Tiges!!!!

 

[Lenny]

Here we go again. Oh he scratched me, mummy help me. What a pack of cry babies.

They are turning it into an art form.

 

[Gayle]

From what I saw, some of the Brisbane players had heaps of scratches.Malcolm Blight got it right last night, these 2 teams are the only times he has EVER seen anything like this.
Strange that it has only been the lions players on the receiveing end. No dogs players have ever been scratched.EVER.
I saw the Liba eye gouging last year. It occured right in front of us. I thought my son was going to jump the fence, he was so angry. Under no circumstances EVER do you need to touch a player above the shoulders in this manner, that includes scratching.I have never seen this happen in any other match against any other team before.
These appear to be the doggies tactics. Remember the squirrel gripping of Hocking a few years ago.
This is nothing new.
The doggies are just getting caught, and don't like it.
I know that as a mother of 2 boys that play junior footy. I would hate it if they ever came home in the condition the lions players came home from Dogland in.
The Lions are not whinging.
The dogs should be fined heavily, this should be a tribunal decision.
Could you imagine if this was a Lloyd or Bradley or some other Melbourne based player this was happening to.Their would be uproar.
Remember also Matthews ethic has always been what happens on the field stays on the field.Things must be very very bad if he is the one pushing for this ( as he is ).Sour grapes no.Just plain sick of players being gouged , pinched, scratched, squirrel gripped, I would say.
Sad that the dogs have to resort to these tactics when they could just as easily play with skill. No need for this at all.

 

[Wal]

As a North supporter, I'd like to apologise for some of the stupid comments by fellow supporters.
I'm not here to slag off people just because they support another team, this site is a forum and it's not a slagging match.

Hopefully some people will think about what they post in the future. Remember email/internet is an easy way to vent your opinion, but it's also a place where you should put a good argument forward.

I always go by the rule by posting an email/message what I'd have the guts to say in person instead of hiding behind a computer screen and venting my anger.

We're all here because we love AFL and I'd love to see more worthwhile posts rather than people name calling.

My 2 cents worth

 

[Eagle_Fan]

What, you think that scratching is just part of the game Lenny? That the Lions shouldn't complain?

How can you justify being deliberately scratched as fair play?

Hang Hóse up to dry!

 

[Jasmin]

Personally I hate both teams and I think this scratching business is bordering on the ridiculous. It's not doing to much to promote the image of either club nor the image of the game as a whole.

And why is it only these two clubs that have this problem? Let's grow up and concentrate on playing football. Both parties should accept some blame, the injuries to the Brisbane players have been well documented but let's not forget that gruesome gash that Libba had on his cheek after the game in Brisbane last year. Very spiteful, very petty and very unnecessary.

 

[jenny]

And lets not forget - VERY ACCIDENTAL- unlike alot of the other incidents re-hashed by the media this week.

 

[Lenny]

Anyone read the Australian Today?

Leigh is in having a cry about how hard it is to keep Victorian footballers in Queensland, Matthews has the nerve to say that Brisbane are not being helped.

Not much, only $400,000.00 (now lets say it all together "FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS"), not much help at all, and who really knows where the money is coming from.

CRYBABY LIONS at it again...

 

[Murray Bunton]

Lenny it sounds like you're doing the crybaby routine here old son. Why don't you stop whingeing and just get on with it and perhaps offer some constructive criticisms of the issue instead of the usual bleating about how unfair it all is and how the Victorian clubs are suffering from the interstate ogres. Back it up with some evidence and I for one might start listening to yuor point of view.

Here's another article I'm sure you'll enjoy from the Courier Mail.

BRISBANE coach Leigh Matthews yesterday expressed NO regret three of the AFL's best players in round three were all former Lions.

Rory Hilton (Richmond), Shane O'Bree (Collingwood) and John Barker (Hawthorn) were all outstanding in weekend matches.

Barker kicked four goals in Hawthorn's seven-point victory over the Lions on Saturday as Brisbane slipped to a 1-2 win-loss record ahead of Sunday's clash with Port Adelaide at Football Park.

Matthews did feel the club had been disadvantaged in the past with its capacity to retain young players and expressed concerns that could again be a problem in the future.

''John Barker was gone well before my time while Rory Hilton and Shane O'Bree were examples of kids who wouldn't stay,'' Matthews said.

''Eventually, we had absolutely no choice with Shane O'Bree because Collingwood had the first draft choice. He was uncontracted and there was nothing we could do about it.

''Rory Hilton was eventually dealt and in the end we got Adam Heuskes for Rory Hilton.

''There was a lot of controversy when we, along with Sydney, were allowed a little bit of extra in our salary cap.

''And the reason was keeping our young players is one of the great problems we have, and Sydney has, more than any other club in the competition.

''We have developed Shane over the last couple of years as a football player, and he has walked out on us.

''There is nothing we can do about it and now he is in his third year of league footy and probably ready to start showing his talent, although he showed a fair bit of it last year.

''But we CAN'T cry over spilt milk.''

I agree with other comments on this thread that clubs from rugby-league states do need extra assistance. I'm sure the Kangaroos will get this assistance also when they relocate permanently to Sydney and become the North Sydney Kangaroos. Only a matter of time before there is another team in Queensland too, probably relocated from Victoria. They'll be receiving assistance as well. Get used to it... it's here to stay

 

[Don]

North Sydney Kangaroos, I was told it would be West Sydney Kangaroos

 

[Pessimistic]

North might be a fait acompli, but theres this little matter of a members vote before another club could be re-located. Hawthorn and Melbourne in particular now require a 75% Majority for that to happen

The other often quoted club is Bulldogs. They have a history of fighting hard.

My bet is that if they need another club in queensland (to help pay for the gabba renovations and no sound business reason) then they may have to invent a new one

But they'll get sydney out of the way first. Divide and conquer has been their modus so far

If all things were equal, Geelong would be the club they were looking at

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

After some of the 'hard ball' tactics the Kangaroos have used up here over the last two seasons to try and attract NSW memberships, I think that the 'Roos might struggle to get a decent supporter-base together in Sydney.

At the moment there is just not enough support for the game up here to really be able to sustain two AFL clubs on an ongoing basis.

Inspite of their best efforts (and some really good footy out on the paddock) the Roos only managed average to poor crowds for their games in Sydney last season - while their attendances in Melbourne really slumped.

Its going to take all of the Kangaroos famous professionalism and business acumen to pull this one off successfully (...and not alienate their Melbourne supporter base at the same time)

 

[Don]

Going by their crowds in Melb their crowds in Sydney were very good

 

[Con]

How's that saying go..."the impossible will take longer..". History shows that the 'Roos achieve anything and everything they set their out to. If they maintain their current support in Melbourne and gain similar support (over time) in Sydney then they won't have done too badly, will they?

 

[GOBBY1]

Originally posted by Mr Ripper:
It *was* naughty of Simon Black to headbutt "a certain bald fullback's" fist with his eye socket, wasn't it?

Of course, if North had a forum on their <chuckle> website, there would be plenty of scope for both of their supporters to spill their guts over all manner of injustices that have been bestowed upon the Shinboners...like having to relocate to Canberra, er Sydney, er Gold Coast, er would you believe, Cairns?

Oh well, enjoy your success while it lasts, cos no. 18 can't go on forever...

North do have a forum on there website

 

[Wal]

Gobby, true the best player in the league = 18 won't be around for ever, but we still have 11, 10, 6, 2, 7, 15, 28, 29, I could go on and on, but we "can" win without #18 in the side. Sure the match against Melbourne a couple of weeks ago isn't a good example, but it HAS been proven we can win matches without him. He didn't really even have too much impact over our win on the Tigers.

"JEALOUSY IS A CURSE" =0)