We need a couple badly.   You won't find too many Premiership winning teams, or even runners up, that didn't have some indigenous magic on the park.

It will be the icing on our team of big contested ball winning brutes.

Edited September 22, 20186 yr by Petraccattack

ryan and rioli carved us up today, desperately need a quick forward- a forward line of petracca McDonald melksham and hannan is simply far too slow 

Do they need to be Aboriginal..?

Maybe wait a week and see if they put up a good performance in the granny, maybe their pressure and forward craft will be as weak as a Jeff garlett unsighted 2018 performance.

But if entertaining question. I think port have Jake neade, Karl Amon and wingard available. Richmond have Shai Bolton to trade for?

Edited September 22, 20186 yr by johndemonic

Agreed we LACK real crumbing forwards. Need for this in case Hogan tmcd Weid fail on a day. 1- Still hope for Jeffy Garlett

2- Toby Bedford should come in as next generation pick.  Starred for the Stingrays. 

3- rookie draft may present an opportunity for a gem

Spargo is not the answer.  Not great pace. Smart but goal kicking is poor. Tackling 50/50 at best

Good indigenous players change the game. We have an exceptional leader in Nev Jetta to help out potential draftees adapt to league footy (and of course Melbourne weather for those from up North)

Jeffy could still turn it on, but I would love to see Taylor and co find an indigenous gem that helps us become even more deadly when the ball is in out 50 arch.

i was suprised to hear that wingards demand may have come down to 800 on AFL Tonight. He clearly has the greatest upside of all crumbing forwards, which of course comes with the greater risk at the price given inconsistency. Although 800 isn't what it used to be. Could end up a bargain if he kicks 50-60 a year. Tough to trade for him though. 

Edited September 23, 20186 yr by johndemonic

25 minutes ago, johndemonic said:

i was suprised to hear that wingards demand may have come down to 800 on AFL Tonight. He clearly has the greatest upside of all crumbing forwards, which of course comes with the greater risk at the price given inconsistency. Although 800 isn't what it used to be. Could end up a bargain if he kicks 50-60 a year. Tough to trade for him though. 

Would love him.  Didn't he kick 60 goals in a season a few years back?  Huge talent.

A change of scenery would do him good...  who the hell would want to play for Port.

And on the plus side for Wingard, he wouldn’t have to play on Neville Jetta anymore 

13 hours ago, Petraccattack said:

We need a couple badly.   You won't find too many Premiership winning teams, or even runners up, that didn't have some indigenous magic on the park.

It will be the icing on our team of big contested ball winning brutes.

Welcome aboard my train that has been running for a couple of years now. 

51 minutes ago, Redleg said:

Welcome aboard my train that has been running for a couple of years now. 

In the words of @picket fence

Choo choo!

Many of us have been lamenting our chronic shortage of outside running midfielders & a couple of smallish, lightning fast, tackling forwards for years.  Surprise, surprise, look what happens when you take a whole team of slow, contested players to a fast track in WA.

Football Department seems obsessed with slowish, inside midfielders and key defenders and it absolutely staggers me to hear we are even wasting our time talking to fat Steven May, particularly when he isn’t a Free Agent and GC want 2 First Rounders. 

FCS, 2 First Rounders for May, and we don’t have the players that are required to take to WA and play on FAST grounds???

 

4 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

 1- Still hope for Jeffy Garlett

 

Don't think our FD share your hope.

See what he does today.

Soemtimes feels like everyone has a Rioli except us. Must be strange for the family 'Oh, we have to go to another grand final'.

Still, we remain the highest scoring team in the game. Can't say we are 'broken' so much, but no doubt an in-form and effective Garlett could've made us even more dangerous.

With all respect to Nibbler, Spargo and Hannan, who contributed well, the 'small forward genius' is the one area we don't have any single elite player.

Hawthorn barely scraped an elimination final win in 2007, were disposed of easily by North the next week, took Rioli at 14 then won the premeirship in 2008. Sounds good to me.

Speaking of which, the North team that knocked out the Hawks in 2007 lost their other two finals by 106 and 87. Easily their two biggest losses for the season. That second loss was against Port, who promptly got filleted by Geelong to the tune of 119 points, which was more than double the margin of any of their other losses for the season. Just mentioning in case anyone has forgotten that finals are volatile and involve many more blowouts than the regular season.

Anyway, I think we can say with confidence we have the grunt worked out, and if injury allows we have the key positions in good shape, so I'm definitely on the bandwagon for finding a bit of magic creativity.

 

Anyone know more about this -

Toby Bedford                        Vic Country/Dandenong Stingrays/Rosebud
27/05/2000                              Height: 176cm  Weight: 65kg

Super quick and elusive small forward/midfielder who was outstanding for Vic Country against Western Australia where he collected 20 possessions, eight tackles and seven inside 50m highlighting his potential. An Indigenous player who is eligible for Melbourne under the Next Generation Academy rules.

17 hours ago, Petraccattack said:

We need a couple badly.   You won't find too many Premiership winning teams, or even runners up, that didn't have some indigenous magic on the park.

It will be the icing on our team of big contested ball winning brutes.

You are aware Garlett is on our list yeah? Lets see how Jetta, Rioli and Ryan go next week. They had 2 tackles between them yesterday. 

5 minutes ago, big_red_fire_engine said:

You are aware Garlett is on our list yeah? Lets see how Jetta, Rioli and Ryan go next week. They had 2 tackles between them yesterday. 

we hardly had the bloody ball !!! fair go......lol

Dont think it did them any harm....just saying

25 minutes ago, big_red_fire_engine said:

You are aware Garlett is on our list yeah?

Yeah, today is likely his last game as a Demon.

2 minutes ago, Petraccattack said:

Yeah, today is likely his last game as a Demon.

Is he retiring with one year left on his contract or you think he will be traded in a straight swap to get Josh Kelly?

2 hours ago, big_red_fire_engine said:

Is he retiring with one year left on his contract or you think he will be traded in a straight swap to get Josh Kelly?

Might retire.  Looks disinterested yet again today.  He has lost the passion.

8 hours ago, goodwindees said:

Many of us have been lamenting our chronic shortage of outside running midfielders & a couple of smallish, lightning fast, tackling forwards for years.  Surprise, surprise, look what happens when you take a whole team of slow, contested players to a fast track in WA.

 

 

And every one of us has been lamenting taking Toumpas (a running outside mid) over Wines (the slow competitive type we are stacked with) for years.

We can’t have it every way.

Forget the glory days of drafting spuds, but even when Roos was at the club we picked up JKH, Hunt and Stretch looking for forward/back/wing players. Harmes as well. Picked up Garlett. Picked up Hibberd.

This is while we also built up the midfield and talls.

Two years ago we took 2 picks in the draft and used them on Hannan - quick forward flanker - and DJ (who was a pressure forward turned backman). Then last year Spargo - nippy half forward type, Fritsch - outside flanker/wing, Baker - speedy wing.

I'm pretty sure the club knows exactly where the weaknesses lie. I'm sure they wanted more out of Garlett and Kent this year and more consistency from Hannan.

Bedford looks an option. Otherwise we keep searching. We aren't the only team on the lookout. There's only so many Rioli's to go around!

We need to look out for the Tom Papley and Ben Ronke types as well.

Shai Bolton....

...been saying this for a while, serious x-factor but has been passed over for Higgins.

Worth a look.

20 hours ago, Little Goffy said:

Anyone know more about this -

Toby Bedford                        Vic Country/Dandenong Stingrays/Rosebud
27/05/2000                              Height: 176cm  Weight: 65kg

Super quick and elusive small forward/midfielder who was outstanding for Vic Country against Western Australia where he collected 20 possessions, eight tackles and seven inside 50m highlighting his potential. An Indigenous player who is eligible for Melbourne under the Next Generation Academy rules.

What is the "Next Generation Academy" and what does this "eligibility" mean? Does it mean that if we want him, we can just add him to our list? Or is it more like the father-son rules where we can nominate him but it comes at a cost? 

1 hour ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

What is the "Next Generation Academy" and what does this "eligibility" mean? Does it mean that if we want him, we can just add him to our list? Or is it more like the father-son rules where we can nominate him but it comes at a cost? 

Rule seems to be that if they don't get picked up in the draft by anyone else, we can take them as a Category-B rookie. If someone else does select them in the draft, then we can still grab them using the bidding points system.

So the answer to your if/or question is... um... yes!