Quite intriguing that Denham states that the Legends stand was opposed by the AFL and John Elliot repeated a number of times on SEN this morning that the stand had received full support from the AFL prior to commencement of work and that the AFL did an about-face by tabling plans for the construction of Docklands Stadium subsequently. Mmm, who do we believe?

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C'mon Blueboys!

I was pondering that too.

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No ones listening till you make a mistake.

My understanding has always been that Docklands had been in the works for some time, and then Jack went ahead and built his stand anyway.

Could be that I'm wrong, but I'm sure someone will be able to produce the dates for these things. Heaven knows we've had that arguement enough times.

There's no article on the Carlton website, is there?? (unless I'm missing it due to caching) That is pretty disappointing to me.

I know we shouldn't expect the board to come out and answer everything that's in the media - but this one is a HUGE story - and I'd love to see the club at least doing a little spin doctoring to the members via their major communication point.....

"We have agonised over this"
Or
"We are expecting major developments, and this is a short term measure"
Etc, etc......

We are into our fourth year under Collo and his board. How many excuses do we have to put up with for our current demise?

I don't care about where we are on the ladder!! The fact that we are in the position that we have to ask for a payout even consider it (4 years prior elliott's demise) is nothing short of a disgrace!!

Where are we losing all this money now? We have moved to TD and the MCG, our membership is now consistently reaching 30k plus!!

What in the @#$%&! is the board doing with our finances!!

Forget the scoreboard, a team like ours (post elliott) should be beginning to make profits and eradicating our losses especially due to some changes and sacrifices we have made for the betterment of our club.

I really hope by the end of the year we will have made a profit or otherwise nothing more than a very small financial loss.

Thge club has shown it has some very loyal supporters like us, we should be looking forwards and i'm sick and tired of looking back.

Well, that was my rant! I feel better now.

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Corinthians 9:6- 8

depends who you want to believe.

i must admit - im positive we had initial backing at OO by the AFL - that was why they agreed to the extended contract (to 2036 or something like that) and they where infact going to help fund it at one stage but the AFL would benefit from games being scheduled there as well.

and the club thought that - in the best interest of the club, the club will self fund it which would make more money in the long run.

and then, as Elliot says, the AFL changed their minds and completly [REDACTED] Carlton in the ass.

forget all the other shite that has happened over the years (salary cap shite) and what not and just think about it.

With the AFL having a set contract to play X amount of games every year at PP - the club was set for the long haul - and in some aspects the club had a certain amout of control over the AFL - and this is where the problem began.

Once the AFL saw that as a problem - they simply funded their own stadium. They originally had Waverly for this - but the AFL got [REDACTED] over by the government not building a train line out that way like they originally proposed to

but when the opportunity came to develop TD why do you think Channel 7, who at the time where probably thinking they will have the tv rights forever, saw the benefit of having a stadium, with pre-built access from all parts of the state and build a brand new stadium and the AFL could see the benefit in them owning a Stadium as well so after all that the AFL just about threw away any previous deals the club had in place and now has an absolute monopoly over the draw, as we saw after getting shafted by the AFL and the debacle that was leaving OO.

This isnt a problem that has just happened - its a problem that has been happening for years - and it wouldnt of mattered who we had in charge at the club - IMO - the club would be in the position they are regardless as just about all our finacial issues come back to us not playing any games at OO anymore and OO not being as finacially viable as it was originally thought.

Now that wasnt an over estimation by the club - it was the AFL changing the flower rules half way through the deal.

The minute TD was penned, was the death nail for OO.

**my point in this is - becuase we have moved from OO - what was a very very good source of income for the club, the Social Club, is now bringing in no coin or very little coin at all.

I dont know what the deal is at TD, but i would image that the deal at OO would have been something close to 100% of all profit went to the club. Now what is the deal at TD? Does the club get 100% profit, or does the TD take their share, AFL take their share, and then what is left - the club can have.

Do you see the difference between having things the way they wanted (our set up at OO) and the way the AFL wants them (the current set up)

This in my opinion is something that no one has considered properly. We had our own caters, our own bar, our own food and we had the best deal possible for the club and the best deal that was going to benefit the club the most.

Can the same be said with the agreements in place with us playing at TD & MCG?

IMO - NO

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

Interesting post Prez, good points!!

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

i dont always call everyone tree hugging hippies and @#$%&! heads.

just most of the time

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

Well we're paying interest and principal on a white elephant. We're paying over inflated ex-player contracts (official and unofficial), we paid a $1m fine.

Without these things we'd probably have quite a healthy bank account - and whose fault is it again that we are paying the above?

Obtaining the $ 1 million dollars is a sensible commercial decision by the board given the circumstances - regrettable that we are in such a position but it is a fact of life so lets get on with it.

You can query why the board waited until 2006 to get the handout and not seeking it earlier but perhaps the assessment was if we went to get the handout straight after the huge salary cap fine then given the duplicity of the AFL in respect to the fine and the salary cap breach they wouldnt have given us the money .Moreover I suspect that the view was that it was better to try and work ourselves out of the mess left by Black Jack(as an aside nearly put my foot through the radio when I heard that buffoon on the radio this morning taking no responsibility for the mire we are in ).Furthermore I suspect the board didnt want assistance unless it was the last resort because of the very hysteria and derision that has been
flying round since the decision yesterday

Yesterdays decision merely shows as I have been saying for years that everyone knows that our salary cap penalties were way too severe and completely over the top and we did say with some prescience that it could put us back on and off the field for 5-10 years.This was both in terms of restrictions on drafting and monetary penalty.Have a look at the article in the SMH today about salary cap rorting and tell me there was not a vituperative element to our penalties vis a vis those given to Essendon* and Melbourne

The board have done very well in getting the ATO to back down on the potential $500 000 assessment on the Social Club given in any circumstance it is very difficult for taxpayers to get them to change their view- the loss would have been greater had they not got this overturned

Having said that I dont think we should not reduce the numbers on the board and it does need an injection of new blood and ideas.There are candidates out there if you look hard enough they might not be the high profile ones but they are good ones nevertheless

AFL decided to go with Docklands/ close Waverley start of 97. Legends stand commenced being built end of 95 & was opened in 97 season.



Ch 7 did not build the stadium. They bailed out the initial owners (not sure who) who were losing money.

see this is what frustrates me.

OO is a white elephant now, now when it was originally funded.

the AFL will not schedule games there as it is looking after its own interests. Conflict of Interest anyone?

you can argue all you want about playing at TD and MCG

but me the facts are clear - and i think its ever so relevant know.

It is not as financially viable to play at TD & MCG as it was for carlton at OO. The loss of income from such entities as the Social Club is proof of that.

If, and i realise this is a big if, we where still playing games at OO and other clubs where still playing games at OO, LIKE IT WAS ORIGINALLY AGREED TO BY THE AFL we would not be in the shit like we are - fines or no fines.

Its simple economics and it appears the case.

20k at OO appears to be more viable to the club than 35K at TD at this stage.

You can balme Elliot as much as you want - but the fact remains, the club set itself up around OO with the AFL's backing (according to who you want to believe) in similair fashion to what you see many EPL clubs doing at the moment in the UK with clubs funding their own stadiums because in the long run they will eventually be a "cash bonanza" for the club in question. Look at Arsenal, Liverpool - all developing self funded stadiums which will become cash cows for the clubs.

Indeed, i think the CFC was thinking way infront of the pack when it agreed to redevelop OO but they where hamstrung when the AFL changed their minds and wanted to build a new stadium in which they owned.

They changed out conditions and proceeded to stick a big cock up the CFC ass.

You see, the AFL is about the AFL becoming a bigger and stronger identity. Where as, in places like England, the FA has its own source of revenue (england national squad) and leaves it up to the clubs themselves to come up with the most significant ways to make coin.

In Australia - we dont have the economy to do it on such a grand scale - however, with the way the AFL wants the game set up, the only clubs that will be able to stand on their own two feet will be interstate clubs which, surprise surprise, have their own facilities and their own agreements in place.

sounds like something we once had.

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

Not sure - but having been around the Club at the time I think to remember there were (public) arguments between Jack and the AFL regarding Legends stand - i.e. that the AFL was against it and Jack pushed ahead anyway and predicted the demise of TD. But I could be wrong...

You're not going to attract more members or opposition supporters by staying at OO. And you need a lot of CASH to bring the facilities up to standard to make it as attractive to supporters as G or TD. And you can't play night games there so we get no FTA exposure.

and im open to that, considering the way JE is/was

but for along time, even before all the saga has happened.

i was always under the impression that the AFL wanted us to develop OO as a second melbourne based ground - and this was before the TD was even a consideration.

like i said, it depends who you ask.

but if it was indeed the case as i stated, then hope you guys can see why i have always been against the way we have been treated the last 10 years or so by the AFL and always question everything they suggest for us.

becuase in my opinion - the AFL Does things in the best interest of the AFL, the decisions that will see the AFL make the most money, not decisions that will benefit clubs specfically.

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

This is all kind of like Goebells and Hitler arguing about what went wrong just as the russians are blowing open the door to the bunker!

What happens now? We take the money and stave off the 'cashflow' crisis but where do we go from there?

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

I don't think you find anybody disagreeing with you on this one...

BTW Fatprick was on SEN this morning post Jack's terrible BS interview and repeated over and over again how we deserved everything inflicted by the AFL because we are "serial salary cap cheaters". He loved this phrase and attributed it the prick and ex- salary cap chaet at Essendon* Ron Evans.... ("as Ron Evans said at the time Carlton are...")

you see, this is where i have always disagreed.

i see no benefit in having 35k members, as compared to 30k members (which is what we where getting at when we had OO as our home base).

the money that club makes is in corporate and catering.

when we where at OO - every cent the club made through that, went to the club.

Is that the same at TD & MCG - no it isnt.

So while we may have 35k members (lets say paying $200 each a year) bringing in a total revenue of $7,000,000 as compared to 30k bringing in $6,000,000 a year.

The money that we would make via corporate and catering would more than offset the difference.

But TV. It's all about TV. When we play where we play

Bollocks - TV is all about the AFL making as much money as they can, not the clubs.

look, im over this entire argument and i should shoot myself for getting into it again.

But, my final comment on our plight at the moment.

The blame can not be put fairly and sqaurely on JE and the previous board. The set the club up in a specific way that would benefit the club the most - the AFL changed that agreement a few years into the deal - and you wonder why we are in the shit.

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

To me this is simply a cash flow issue. Well, der. But if we've traded for the last few years and managed to get to a position were we need the CBF and can get it without restriction or onerous condition, what is the big deal?

If we went cap in hand 3-4 yrs ago the conditions on the CBF would have been steep.
While finances are still obviously stuffed, I feel Collo has 'managed' us into a better position.

And 25k crowd at OO is always going to be 25k crowd. 35k at TD can eventually become 50k with some on field success.

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This might sound extreme in the context of alleged sexual assault, drunken violence and a drug trafficking charge...

Colonial?

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No ones listening till you make a mistake.