Petracca injury just another day in the life of a Demons supporter

Penster- I'm waiting for Bob Gooch to answer that question.

How much of the Old Melbourne/ Toorak boys club culture still permeates the club or has it all been flushed out? That sort of culture has been traditionally associated with keeping people out, rather than letting them in!

Yes we did, but we were not hitting any high nots on or off field during that period. Good memory Rob, I recall the 1point defeat of Melbourne - portentous in some ways. Hawks voted against a merger, Melb voted in favour. Hawks financial affairs picked up, Melbourne's on field performance remains dire.

Who said it needed to be the "best example" (but given it meant losing a player to a catastrophic and fairly rare natural disaster it's a reasonable one). The thing is you can say a club has had more than a bit of bad luck, it doesn't mean you're absolving it of all the mistakes it has made as a club. The mistakes of the club are not the supporters fault, just as winning premiership is your good fortune, rather than something to be sanctimonious or personally superior about andy (or even another clubs premierships for that matter).

Melbourne has been on the bottom of the heap due to a lot of bad luck since 2006 but it's the bad management that has compounded this bad luck into what we see today. For example, those injured players you mentioned would still would have been useless if Mark Neeld was coaching! There are very few supporters who know what it's like to go through this sort of period, Richmond... St Kilda... Sydney... Fitzroy... Carlton... Most clubs go through a period of either bad luck or bad management at some stage but It's when the two combine that disaster awaits! Melbourne is on the right track. Paul Roos is not there to win a flag, he's there to instil standards that just haven't been there for way too long. He's there to attempt to change the culture - a culture that has stunk for a long time. He's there to steer the playing group in the right direction, instil standards that will continue to be passed down through the playing group for years to come. He has been given the same job that Ron Barassi had at Sydney in the early 1990s and Melbourne in the 1980s. His legacy is still seen today at Sydney and until recently Melbourne. Paul Roos may not walk away from Melbourne with a finals appearance but he will leave with the club in a much stronger position than before he arrived.

You made the top 8 in 96... I was at the game you beat Melbourne by a point (last home and away game before the merger vote) in to get you into the top 8 and the following week you lost to the swans by 5 points.

If Melbourne have had bad luck, then the tsunami was hardly the best example to give- yes that was tragedy but it was hardly on the scale of the 1958 Munich air crash. Jim Stynes was a tragedy but in many ways that summed up the club's problems- a week later they came out and played insipidly against Brisbane in their first match of the season- it seemed the "do it for Jim" attitude was totally absent in a situation where many other clubs would've been desperate to show it. Melbourne have also made a fair share of their own mistakes, such as sacking Joe Gutnick after he'd saved the club, merely because he wasn't an upper-class WASP like the Melbourne board members.

After reading my comments, I just want to make one more clear point. In no way am I saying a Dees fan should stop supporting them based solely on these tanking events. At this stage I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what Roos can do, despite me not agreeing with it. But if I see Roos perform badly this year then I would expect him to man up and take responsibility for it. If they can't get their house in order by the next TV rights deal then perhaps they don't belong in an elite competition such as the AFL.

"but I don’t think getting all sanctimonious about it and sticking the boots in is in the right place, when a kid has suffered some pretty bad misfortune." Dal if I wanted to stick he boot in on this issue I would have joined the other three MFC topics that are on the front page of the AFL section as we speak. Do you see me commenting on any of them? I simply came to this thread because it's more about the bad luck of the MFC rather than a single individual. Sure it's also bad luck for this kid and I feel for him, but this thread is not about that. Look at the first four paragraphs - it's all about Melbourne's bad luck. I'm tired of people making excuses for this club and I truly believe it's one of the reasons this club is so poor. I also believe Roos is not the man for this club and thankfully he won't be there for much longer. He last year epitomised this very issue by bringing up old wounds in 'tanking'. He took zero responsibility himself during some of the worst performances I have ever seen and blamed the 'psychological' baggage some of their players are still carrying post these events. Now even if there is a small bit of truth to such a crazy notion...keep it to yourself! You don't come out and make a statement like this. If it was anyone else other than Roos being bank rolled by the AFL...they would have been fired for such inappropriate comments, especially after the AFL found them 'not guilty' of such actions in very controversial circumstances. If Geelong acted in the same way, I would be the first to harshly criticise them in the same manner. If they acted constantly in a manner like this, then absolutely 'yes' I would abandon them for not acting within the spirit of the game or it's rules. However, if Geelong did everything to the best of their ability -and within the rules- and lost every game for the rest of their time then I would still support them. That's the difference Dal and I don't think you or a lot of other people here are making this distinction when it comes to the actions of the MFC and to an even greater extent the EFC. True supporters of a club don't put up with such rubbish. I person that follows a club with no integrity is not a person of character and certainly doesn't require a bag loads of it. Although I can see where you are coming from, I just don't agree with it and 14 years of rot tells me I'm right.

I think Melbourne supporters would say you have no idea what "tough times" really are. Just because your side bottoms out occasionally, and they all do, that's nothing like decades and decades of struggle, with only the odd faint glimmer of sunshine to keep you going. The Dees also have had more than their fair share of bad luck, totally outside of their control due to tsunami's and the like, which I think David Schwartz has given a pretty comprehensive chronicle of once or twice.

Dalgety- Hawthorn have been through hard times and clearly I stuck by them. That said, I'm proud that we've never tanked and that we haven't finished last for 50 years. Yes we got good players in the 04-05 drafts but most clubs have done that at some point- the difference is that our recruits wanted to stay because of our superior club culture. Whenever someone tells me Hawthorn tanked in 2004 I ask "which games did we tank in" and they go quiet. We won 2 out of our last 4 that year and almost beat Brisbane in a third game- this saved us from a wooden spoon that had looked certain all season. The clear evidence from Melbourne's current embarrassment is that draft picks don't win you flags, but a worthy club culture does. That was why we didn't merge in 1996 (I voted No by the way), because we felt our club culture would've been eaten up by an inferior one.

The Hawks have fed off the draft just nicely, whether it was "tanking" or not is a subjective thing, but under Clarkson they made a very conscious decision to bite the bullet and get some kids via the draft to take them back to being a power house. The Dees just happened to "tank" when there was a lot of focus on it and didn't do it as smartly as some other clubs did. Maybe the Dee's also suck at sucking, but I don't think getting all sanctimonious about it and sticking the boots in is in the right place, when a kid has suffered some pretty bad misfortune.

Perhaps andy is a follower of the Hawks from way back in the 90's when they almost merged with Melbourne? The Hawks though didn't embarrass the competition with 'tanking' - only to then be not found guilty of 'tanking', yet given a fine for something other than tanking and finally...Roos admitting to them tanking. Oh and the $500000 fine handed down for 'not tanking' was handed back to them because of financial difficulty. Lets not forget the millions the other clubs are paying Roos to send them backwards playing quite possibly the most horrific football I have ever witness in AFL/VFL history. Glorious stuff indeed...

Stick with 'em Bob and I hope the Dees win a flag for you. I support the Hawks and went door knocking raffle tickets in '96 when we looked like folding and were at the bottom of the heap, just 5 years after a golden age. Things can and do turn around.

Newsflash andy - a big fat zero flags between you and Rick, but the clubs you have chosen to support (for whatever reason - perhaps success?) have ridden a wave of success. Not much character required of a supporter to stick with a successful club, however bagloads required to stick fat with a struggling club like the Dees.

Bob I truly hope you do win a premiership, because it's the fans like yourself that have been let down. I can also tell you are a passionate supporter of the Dees and they need more people like you. Does not change the last 10 years though and this club has been as bad as bad can be.

No Bob, he's a Geelong fan. Between him & me- 6 of the last 8 flags. Between you and Melbourne- how many finals games in those 8 years?

Your an embarrassment yourself - can't wait to let you have it once we have achieved a premiership - reckon you'd have to be a Collingwood supporter eh !

Yep the Dees have been bad for over 10 years because of bad luck... And people wonder why this club is an embarrassment to the competition.

Dees can't take a break :( hopefully Petracca still manages to get back on track and turn into the player we all know he is capable of.