u crack me up !!

Pratt had an Oligarchical impact on this footy cllub... it was how things were done in a way.... but the club never had a period where it was so family 'owned'.

We need to move away from that... and bring the club into line with whats needed.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

....going well so far! Is Jeanne and Ruffy being part of the board part of this plan?

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Shame you're the only one



Just the sort of statement that one would hope could get us back on-topic

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WADA medical director Dr Alan Vernec describes Essendon* FC drug case as biggest scandal in team sport the world of sport has seen. #WC2WB

#GUILTY

It's better than the plan and/or suggestions I have read on here from you! But feel free to lay your suggestions out for the rest of us to judge.

Ironic that some posters are full of hearty congratulations to the club...but some of us have been kicking and screaming for this (and this is stage one of about seven stages) to happen for years. Then once it starts to happen and we lay a parting boot into some, we're admonished for it by people who will defend the club at all costs...the same people who defended Smorgon and to a large degree defend Kernahan to this very day. The same people who really believe that Dick Pratt 'went out and hired the best' (this never eventuated). Some people are even confusing the year that a handful of auditors told Bruce Mathieson to 'hand in the keys'...by about 5 years. Don't rewrite history.

History can be seen the way each and every individual supporter want things to be seen. I don't think anybody needs to question anybody's view on things if that's how they see it in there eyes.
It just seems that certain posters want to make an issue of just about everything these days. This topic is about looking forward and not backwards and hopefully things turn out ok.
New coach, plus assistants, some new fresh blood on the board. Lets not turn this into a shit fight before anything has happened.

So tell me how do you know "Richard" was reluctant to do so for these reasons? You seem familiar enough to call him by his full name, so surely you must know something? What you've said is completely contradictory to what has eventuated so far, even with 2 family members on board "carrying out his legacy".

My suggestion is to be wary of the club being indebted to anyone, even the most noble of gestures still carries strings attached.

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Spot on. The way they want it to be seen. Because some people still have the blindfold on. Last time we all had the blindfold on - the club nearly disappeared.

You won't get any arguments out of me but now is time to look forward and not back.
No guarantees that the new lot will get things right either but going back and discussing what Elliot, Collins, Smorgan, Pratt and Sticks did or did not do is not what this is about.
Let's see how it evolves over the next 12 months, not how it evolved over the last 10 years or so because that has been done to death so many times.

Was that when we almost handed the keys back? What year/s was that again?

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

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So let me ask you then, would you prefer that the Pratt's withhold the donations/financial support provided to the club? Where do you think the club would be today, would YOU have stepped up with a plan to rectify the path we were heading down, if so and as per my previous post please outline YOUR recommended strategy - i'd be keen to hear it.

Supporters of other clubs would love to have benefactors like those that support Carlton, it's a large part of the reason why we have been so successful in the past.

If you think there was a better way to lead the club then why haven't you stepped up to the plate?

To quote John Kennedy, "Don't think, Don't hope, Do"!

I think that the past 5 years have shown that the AFL would be hellbent on ensuring they didn't lose a club, which would jeopardise the revenue potential from the past two TV rights deal, and would have propped us up until things turned around.

I could see someone like Fitzpatrick being parachuted in, in the same way the AFL are trying to ensure Ben Buckley goes to North, or David Matthews with GWS.

Whilst bigger short term problems may have arisen, I feel that our long term problems that we've struggled with, essentially since the birth of the national competition, would be in better shape. We would have addressed our revenue streams, we would have looked at our antiquated business model and been forced to get better.

We wouldn't have got Judd, which probably sets back the on-field success a year or two. On the other hand, we may have recruited a better CEO than Greg Swann.

To go into anything more indepth is just setting yourself up for "What would you know?" - What I am fairly certain of though, is that this club would have survived post-Pratt, and possibly (and certainly irrelevantly) in some areas for the better.



Want to take a guess at what the key word is there?

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Want to take a guess at what the key word is there?[/quote]

IMHO you have no idea about what was going on and your scenario "We wouldn't have got Judd, which probably sets back the on-field success a year or two. On the other hand, we may have recruited a better CEO than Greg Swann. " makes me laugh.

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

Calm down, Mikkey, no need to get personal. I know how much you hate keyboard warriors....

What aspect of Port Adelaide's plight over the past 2 years - and the AFL's response to it, of which is far worse than ours in 2002/5/7 leads you to believe that the AFL would have let us fold?

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Not personal, but what sense does it make to argue with somebody who is totally simplifying the issues as per the statement I quoted. PA is a very different fish. Ownership and TV rights wise. They also have a healthy infrastructure. The 2006 situation was under different TV deal scenario and an AFL very keen to relocate a club. Any idea how our facilities looked like? Ratts mentioned he had to bring his own white board when he started ass coach - club could not afford it.

You think young draft picks would have stayed if this had gone on for years? Etc etc We were in a Fitzroy state with a larger support base. The AFL could have done all kind of things to us. We would have been in a worse state then North for years

Anyway, useless to continue the discussion. I have a very good recollection of this period and was privy to information at the time and saw the facilities and know how bad things were. If you think everything would have fine without Pratt a couple of years later you are kidding.

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

So Mikkey...how come North, Western Bulldogs etc have comparable training facilities to Carlton? The AFL and the Victorian government were budgeting for a $60 million funding project at the end of the 2005 EOFY. I know because I was privy to those discussions at State Government level. It was agreed that the AFL would commit $10.3 million between 2007-2010, State Government adding $14 million and the seven affected AFL clubs (Carlton, Richmond, St Kilda, Essendon*, Kangaroos, Collingwood and Hawthorn) would commit $15 million between them as did the various local councils - in our case Melbourne City Council.

Pratt didn't become President until February 2007. Had nothing to do with us getting new facilities. Nothing. Did provide some coin for minor changes to the original plans, but you're barking up the wrong tree here....again.

Here we go again. More selective stuff... again... cant help yourself. Good at re-writing history. It's called "revisionism".

Yes facilities were supported for the Melbourne clubs but we would have struggled big time until it was finished and . We would have struggled big time to find the money WE had to pay for the project. Remember Smorgo land? The facilities had been budgeted but were far off including approval processes and th money CFC had to raise. I also doubt it would have been anything like what it is today - check the archives for Smorgo land drawings. Western Bulldogs needed Howard to promise federal money to make their project happen. You are again distorting history.

Things were not this clear cut. We were nearly broke in 06/07 and I WAS privy to this situation. Revenue was going down big time. The facilities were not even on the drawing board but in a very long pipe line and far away. We had no funds for our part in it and I doubt anybody would have funded the finance in the state we were in. If North had relocated nothing would have been build there - and it could have been us. We had the worst facilities. Pratt got a a new weight room right away and his fund raiser raised several millions for the football department within the first couple of months.

On top of that we increased corporate, sponsorship and membership funds dramatically in 07 and onwards due to his presence and pulling power. "Did provide some coin for minor changes to the original plans" my backside, he paid / raised a lot of money when it counted far before we ever started building. And it was the turn around that allowed us to finance our part of the cost. He also paid the salary of several new people he hired right away. I could go on.

You and others can continue to belittle the efforts of Pratt and air rumors re motives as fact - easy to pee on a dead mans grave.

I did not sit in some budget meeting with the State Government at the time but I went to every public meeting / event / dinner / lunch etc in 05/06 and had conversations with board members, former board members, players, ex-players etc and I saw the facilities. The situation was dramatic in 06, and Pratt would not have come back if it hadn't. Nobody else wanted to do it. So you and Rhino can try to spin it to your hearts content but to para phrase a former senior coach "you are wrong".

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

I cannot believe some so called Carlton people can be so ungrateful to the man who kept this club alive!
I hope to god that we never get to that stage ever again, because next time there will be no Pratt.
I feel ashamed reading some of these posts.

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"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent." Qui-Gon Jinn 15-05-2005

"there’s more chance of me becoming the full forward for the [Western Bulldogs] than there is of any change in the Labor Party." Julia Gillard 18-05-2010

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"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent." Qui-Gon Jinn 15-05-2005

"there’s more chance of me becoming the full forward for the [Western Bulldogs] than there is of any change in the Labor Party." Julia Gillard 18-05-2010