Required: 1 x War Chest

Rd 20 v St Kilda

Another round down, another round closer to September, but also to the end of Brad Green’s career, having last Wednesday announced his retirement at season’s end. What wonderful timing considering two days earlier I had a dig at his over-the-top goal celebrations from the previous game. Now I realise that he was savouring every last moment at the end of a proud career he knew was coming to a close. Thanks Brad, makes me feel great.

For those who are interested observers in the Green retirement discussion, this is an interesting article from The Age that argues now is not the time for him to go:
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/demon-loyalty-goes-to-hell-20120808-23umq.html

And from a man at the end of his career (unless GWS waves the cheque book), to one at the beginning in Sam Blease. Five goals if you don’t mind, he’s kicking as well as he’s post-match interviewing, using the phrase “cracked in and had a crack” twice in the space of a few minutes. His five on the weekend put him second on the Demons goal-scoring list, 12 goals behind Mitch Clark. Yes that Mitch Clark who got injured at half time in round 13 meaning he hasn’t played the last 7 ½ games. A dire stat considering Sammy isn’t quite who you’d expect to be leading the goal scoring for fit players. No wonder our president Don McClardy has kicked off 100% Melbourne, asking supporters to dig deep so we can help “recruit the best”:

“We are building a war chest, and we need the support of our members to take full advantage of the opportunities upon us for the 2012 trade period,”[1]

source: melbournefc.com.au

I’m going to make the radical suggestion that we don’t build this war chest to buy players, let’s build it to buy games! Apparently we’re tankers already so we’ve got runs on the board in terms of match fixing. As for disgruntled opposition fans who feel cheated, well, buy them off too. And we’ll be able to afford it. Let’s not forget who the bulk of Melbourne FC members are. When Don McClardy uses the term ‘war chest’, he’s not talking about a couple of million dollars, he’s talking amounts similar to that of a small nations GDP.

Conversely, I can only wonder what an idea like 100% Melbourne must seem like for those 11 Melbourne players who’ve had contract negotiations put on hold until mid-October, smack bang in the middle of the new three week trading period (three weeks due to free agency).

To finish I’m going to leave you with a stat that I discovered from the weekend’s round. I have often wondered what it would be like to be a stats guru, someone that collates and dismembers a game’s numerical gene pool until there’s nothing human about the outcome. I now know that it’s one of the more boring things one can do in life. Granted I’ve never been gifted with numbers but the following shows the extent to which that is true:

• Only one game in the round saw both teams score sub-100 points.

That’s it. Genuinely that’s as far as I got.

Go Dees.

---

[1] http://www.melbournefc.com.au