Wow, the guy commentating the Saints game (Sandy something) has no clue! He said St Kilda have Melbourne first round and then the next 4 four rounds are no easy bets (one of them is against Brisbane). How has this guy retained his job as a bloody football commentator?

12 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

I wonder, in hindsight, how many Carlton fans would not do the Judd trade.  They would have held on to a high draft pick while also keeping Josh Kennedy as well.  It's easy to look at now, but they might have been better off not doing it, although with Judd still in his prime it would be hard to argue against making the trade at the time.

Of course. Can't hold it against them. In hindsight though it would have made more sense if they were already mid-tier. They were bottom of the table and pretty awful. He made them substantially better but nothing more than..a mid-range team. Melbourne dumped Paul McNamee bevause he tried to do the same thing with Jonathon Brown. Probably worked out for the better.

Saints are $2.15 against us round 1 I'm surprised by that, surely they should be favorites

1 hour ago, brendan said:

Saints are $2.15 against us round 1 I'm surprised by that, surely they should be favorites

They'll come down after today's thumping.

We dropped slightly last week when we beat Carlton too.

 

In other news, I just saw Dunn take a defensive mark, give an unnecessary handball to Howe who was hardly in a better position and he basically popped up a handball that was way too high and put his team mate under immense pressure and the result? Goal to Freo.

Both so average. 

Bolton is on a hiding to nothing in that job. Strikes me as similar to Neeld actually, premiership winning assistant coach thrown in the deep end at a dysfunctional club with a VFL quality list (although Carlton still have pretensions to being Big 4, which has an extra level of pressure. Right now they've no forward line (Levi Casboult lol) their midfield depth is shallow, their ruck relies on Kreuzer staying fit which isn't a safe bet, and their defence is based on Weitering. 

All clubs suffer injuries and any club in the comp would be hard put to replace players of their quality, but there is literally no one on the Carlton list who can replace Cripps or Weitering if they go down. Another season or two like the last couple and Cripps might fancy returning to WA to replace Priddis at the Weagles instead of playing a lone hand in midfield. 

Their strategy of building through the draft is flawed, throwing young players in to stem the bleeding didn't work for us and won't work here. It is an absolute indictment of everyone associated with the footy club that we've lost to this rabble in successive seasons. If we are serious about being a ruthless outfit this mob need to be put down by 10+ goals in Rd 2 when we play them. 

Yep agree Bolton has a mark neeld feeling about him, is it because he is a school teacher who knows, but Carlton should be asking Roos the question for next year 

13 hours ago, Goffer said:

Bolton is on a hiding to nothing in that job. Strikes me as similar to Neeld actually, premiership winning assistant coach thrown in the deep end at a dysfunctional club with a VFL quality list (although Carlton still have pretensions to being Big 4, which has an extra level of pressure. Right now they've no forward line (Levi Casboult lol) their midfield depth is shallow, their ruck relies on Kreuzer staying fit which isn't a safe bet, and their defence is based on Weitering. 

All clubs suffer injuries and any club in the comp would be hard put to replace players of their quality, but there is literally no one on the Carlton list who can replace Cripps or Weitering if they go down. Another season or two like the last couple and Cripps might fancy returning to WA to replace Priddis at the Weagles instead of playing a lone hand in midfield. 

Their strategy of building through the draft is flawed, throwing young players in to stem the bleeding didn't work for us and won't work here. It is an absolute indictment of everyone associated with the footy club that we've lost to this rabble in successive seasons. If we are serious about being a ruthless outfit this mob need to be put down by 10+ goals in Rd 2 when we play them. 

Absolutely agree...

last year was horrific!!

Am I right that Carlton dropped Gibbs, Murphy, Simpson, Kruezer and Docherty for the game against St Kilda, as well as playing Cripps for only a half?

So, not too much to be taken from that result. Though I'm happy for McCartin, I hope he does well, it is going to be a tough career, another No.1 pick taken ahead of two champions of the game 

Brisbane and Freo seem to have rediscovered some competence. Collingwood can still lose games in new and amusing ways (3 seconds left! HA!).

Not a lot else to learn from the pre-season games so far.

Thanks to some classic Carlton tanking, the Saints have robbed us of top spot. This outrage has to be dealt with at AFL House, otherwise everybody will regard the JLT competition as meaningless. 

St Kilda 2 - - 179 86 208.1 8
Melbourne 2 - - 208 148 140.5 8
Gold Coast Suns 2 - - 160 133 120.3 8
North Melbourne 2 - - 160 137 116.8 8
 - - - - -  - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - -
Richmond 1 - - 92 73 126.0 4
GWS Giants 1 1 - 112 91 123.1 4
West Coast Eagles 1 1 - 144 122 118.0 4
Sydney Swans 1 1 - 117 107 109.3 
Collingwood 1 1 - 190 181 105.0 4
Hawthorn 1 1 - 172 189 91.0 4
Brisbane Lions 1 1 - 123 139 88.5 4
Fremantle 1 1 - 139 192 72.4 4
Port Adelaide - 1 - 56 57 98.2 0
Geelong - 1 - 94 98 95.9 0
Essendon - 2 - 170 184 92.4 0 
Western Bulldogs - 2 - 144 158 91.1 0
Adelaide - 1 - 73 92 79.3 0
Carlton - 2 - 92 238 38.7 0

By the way, does anyone know what JLT stands for and what it does apart from sponsoring this fiasco?

Insurance 

Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group PLC

I actually think Bolton can coach, but sos in my opinion has been a disaster as a recruiter, he stuffed up so many high picks at the giants and now he is bringing anyone who can't get a game at the giants to the blues. 

And carltons leaders are all super overrated with the exception of kade Simpson who I see as a good honest b grade player. 

Lions look much better already 

13 hours ago, Goffer said:

Bolton is on a hiding to nothing in that job. Strikes me as similar to Neeld actually, premiership winning assistant coach thrown in the deep end at a dysfunctional club with a VFL quality list (although Carlton still have pretensions to being Big 4, which has an extra level of pressure. Right now they've no forward line (Levi Casboult lol) their midfield depth is shallow, their ruck relies on Kreuzer staying fit which isn't a safe bet, and their defence is based on Weitering. 

All clubs suffer injuries and any club in the comp would be hard put to replace players of their quality, but there is literally no one on the Carlton list who can replace Cripps or Weitering if they go down. Another season or two like the last couple and Cripps might fancy returning to WA to replace Priddis at the Weagles instead of playing a lone hand in midfield. 

Their strategy of building through the draft is flawed, throwing young players in to stem the bleeding didn't work for us and won't work here. It is an absolute indictment of everyone associated with the footy club that we've lost to this rabble in successive seasons. If we are serious about being a ruthless outfit this mob need to be put down by 10+ goals in Rd 2 when we play them. 

You can't compare neeld with Bolton. 

Firstly Bolton is a better communicator and the players actually like him. Secondanly he has a game plan that can win games. Admittedly it's the Hawks game plan however I'd much prefer this game style to what ever neeld tried to bring to the MFC

 

Gws have lost picks 2,3,12 from 2012 draft.

pick 4 and 10 from 2011

Pick 1 and 14 from 2013. Griffith for Boyd is a loss in my opinion. 

Picks 4 and 7 from 2014 draft have never played a game. Ahern and pickett 

That would decimate any other side but GWS have been boosted by the academy picks from the riverina.

That has to stop.

No way can they claim kids north of the murray. These kids would have played AFL regardless if GWS was around 

 

 

St Kilda are looking the goods this year. Losing to them in round 1 wouldn't be a disaster, they're ahead of us.

25 minutes ago, Pipefitter said:

St Kilda are looking the goods this year. Losing to them in round 1 wouldn't be a disaster, they're ahead of us.

Their defense was lacking last year with tall backs. Carlisle and brown have sured this up. 

I think Roos had no idea how to beat them. Goodwins game plan might play the saints better 

2 hours ago, bandicoot said:

You can't compare neeld with Bolton. 

Firstly Bolton is a better communicator and the players actually like him. Secondanly he has a game plan that can win games. Admittedly it's the Hawks game plan however I'd much prefer this game style to what ever neeld tried to bring to the MFC

Bolton and Neeld are/were not great coaches but you can't really compare their circumstances. Neeld came into a club and took over an already dysfunctional bruise-free group of players, some of who were already rebellious and angry about the dismissal of Dean Bailey. Bolton hasn't had to put up with a tenth of the disruption Neeld had to face coming from inside and outside - the death of Jim Stynes, the Jurrah incident, the racism beat up, the tanking investigation, sponsors going broke as well as a huge injury list and supposedly talented footballers who couldn't run a few laps of an oval without expiring.

We don't need to make comparisons of poor coaching records. Coaches need and deserve a good space and time to bring about change. It took Roos three years and, in his final year, we still lost to a damaged Essendon and a poor Carlton. 

I'm still confident we can beat the Saints in Round 1. Carlton, like a lot of clubs in the middle of the practice match series, put in a younger and far weaker squad than in the first week. They had a different approach to the game yesterday and the result was inevitable. They're not going to set the world on fire but the result didn't reflect how their season is going to pan out.

One team's always bound to look fabulous when the other 'stinks it up'

Happy for the Aints to think theyre that good. Round 1 will show they Aint !!

Saints do look good though, they have the best bunch of marking talls in the league and jack Steven is on fire in the middle, we will need to be in our mettle to beat them, and must win the stoppages and midfield battle.

1 hour ago, beelzebub said:

One team's always bound to look fabulous when the other 'stinks it up'

Happy for the Aints to think theyre that good. Round 1 will show they Aint !!

I agree. I don't like all the finals talk etc. coming out about us. Would much prefer the Saints to get all the talk and then come out and surprise them round 1!

3 hours ago, bandicoot said:

Their defense was lacking last year with tall backs. Carlisle and brown have sured this up. 

 

Sorry to be the grammar cop but the word is "shored".

(Some blues I can let go but this one is totally new.)

Otherwise, I agree.

12 hours ago, Abe said:

I actually think Bolton can coach, but sos in my opinion has been a disaster as a recruiter, he stuffed up so many high picks at the giants and now he is bringing anyone who can't get a game at the giants to the blues. 

And carltons leaders are all super overrated with the exception of kade Simpson who I see as a good honest b grade player. 

Lions look much better already 

The fact that SOS has recruited so many GWS players is a massive concern.

He also managed to stuff a number of high draft picks at GWS, it's just he had so many of them that it didn't really matter too much.

12 hours ago, Abe said:

I actually think Bolton can coach, but sos in my opinion has been a disaster as a recruiter, he stuffed up so many high picks at the giants and now he is bringing anyone who can't get a game at the giants to the blues. 

And carltons leaders are all super overrated with the exception of kade Simpson who I see as a good honest b grade player. 

Lions look much better already 

See I agree with everything else here, mate, but I'm not convinced Bolton can coach.

 

I watched the Carlton St Kilda replay last night and the thibg that struck me was Carlton's inability to properly spread from any contest. It reminded me so strongly of Melbourne under Neeld and then this was compounded by their basic skill errors.

If they take this form into the season proper, they'll certainly be wooden spooners. 

11 minutes ago, A F said:

See I agree with everything else here, mate, but I'm not convinced Bolton can coach.

 

I watched the Carlton St Kilda replay last night and the thibg that struck me was Carlton's inability to properly spread from any contest. It reminded me so strongly of Melbourne under Neeld and then this was compounded by their basic skill errors.

If they take this form into the season proper, they'll certainly be wooden spooners. 

I think last season we saw carltons defensive structures look far more organised but they just lacked the cattle to win consistently. 

They really rely on Cripps winning heaps of the ball so they fall to pieces without him. 

They missed a massive trick not drafting will Brodie in my opinion, exactly the inside bull they desperately need to support Cripps 

jlt = just like training