Talk:2016 Melbourne Football Club season

2016 fixture

As we all know, the 2016 AFL fixture came out on October 29, which is just over ten weeks ago. A few things I'd like to point out:

• Melbourne's 2016 fixture is slightly better commercially as opposed to past seasons. Apart from their regular Queen's Birthday match against Collingwood, they also get home games against Richmond and Hawthorn for the first time since 2012 and 2013 respectively. I think that's a good result and is a testament to improved results in 2015. However, no Friday night matches is a huge blow for the club (same for Carlton, St Kilda, the Brisbane Lions, Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants).
• I'm also bemused as to why Melbourne must play a "home" game against St Kilda at Etihad Stadium (the Saints' regular home ground) in Round 6 (the same thing happened in 2013 when they played a home game against North Melbourne at Etihad (NM's home ground), and in 2004/07 when they "hosted" the Western Bulldogs at Etihad). The MCG is booked that night for Richmond vs Port Adelaide but from my thinking Port draws lower than St Kilda. If I was in Simon Lethlean's shoes I would have no doubt swapped the venues for these two matches (meaning Melbourne vs St Kilda at MCG and Richmond vs Port Adelaide at Etihad).
  • Additionally, St Kilda hosts the return match at Etihad in Round 17. This effectively gives St Kilda two home games against Melbourne; however, these will be the only two times Melbourne has to play at Docklands in 2016. I guess the St Kilda hoodoo will have to live on for another season after this fixturing debacle.

Another thing:

• Suppose Melbourne hosts Essendon in an elimination final (as was the case in 2004; that season, Essendon hosted the two clubs' only regular season meeting in Round 13). Do the gate receipts go to Melbourne as they "hosted" the elimination final, or does the money go to the AFL as they are responsible for organising and fixturing the finals series? I was only posing this question just for curiosity, but from what I think Melbourne would get the financial benefits as they were the home team for this specific elimination final (which they eventually lost by just five points).

Thoughts please? MasterMind5991 (talk) 08:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I've been meaning to write a fixture summary but have been busy the last couple of months and just haven't had the time. I'm going to try and do a different summary which is more Wikipedia appropriate whereby the analysis comes more from references, I feel the past summaries contained a lot of original research, so I'm going to try and move away from that. I do have a bunch of references bookmarked and the summary is on my to do list.

To answer the questions, the draw is better to an extent, but (this probably slightly bias and hence why I want to summarise with references), I don't think the commercial draw is reflective of where Melbourne finished on the ladder (13th). Every MCG tenant (Collingwood, Hawthorn, Melbourne, and Richmond) must play one home game at Etihad, I don't know what the original reason for it is though. I wouldn't rule out Melbourne not being able to beat St Kilda at Etihad as Melbourne won there in round 23, and nearly (and probably should have) beaten St Kilda at Etihad in 2015, when Montagna kicked a goal with 19 seconds to go. As for the finals gate receipts, I'm pretty sure it all goes back to the AFL as neither club is running the event, it's an AFL run event, but I'm not 100% sure. Flickerd (talk) 12:01, 10 January 2016 (UTC)