Just to throw a name into the fray for a key defender ..

Colin Garland - Tall, Athletic and strong and will be a very good player.

We cannot keep relying on Carrol to do everything week in and week out.

We have good defenders but none of them are all that tall.

Our defense is consistently the area that lets us down as we never hawve height in the backline.

Frawley will take time to develop and IMO he should be used as a half back flanker until he gets the body size to match it with the top A.F.L forwards.

Garland is more of a flanker than Frawley...

Starting FB will be Carroll. If we play well upfield he will do fine.

Standouts - IF WE PLAY WELL

Robertson - He'll still be where we get our goals.

Rivers - Most important player at Melbourne.

McLean - Leading a very talented & young midfield group.

  torpedo said:

Let me first say that I dont think labelling newish senior players, whether they be first year or third year, as 'stand outs' is neither fair nor realistic. Unless they're already established in the best 22 anything positive should be viewed as a bonus.

Surely players, new or established, can stand out for a number of reasons. One of which might be that they had a stand-out first, second, third or fourth season? Morton might "stand-out" as he breaks into the team half way through the season and makes an impact?

Or a player might stand out as a new role was assigned which they thrive in and their performances "stand out".

I agree with your thrust however that new players need time to develop and they especially need our support.

Would love Miller to burn...

  torpedo said:

Let me first say that I dont think labelling newish senior players, whether they be first year or third year, as 'stand outs' is neither fair nor realistic. Unless they're already established in the best 22 anything positive should be viewed as a bonus.

My big improvers for 2008:

Moloney - if fate took a different course may well have a premiership medal around his neck. As much as I love the mongrels, Beamer has more natural football ability than McLean and Jonesy put together.

....

Lets not get ahead of ourselves:

..

Moloney is still OP ridden and has missed two years of football. I wish Beamer was fit and did have more ability than McLean and Jones. Fact is he does not.

I doubt whether Beamer if he stayed at Geelong and fit would have made the GF. I was critical of the Cats for trading Beamer to get Ottens. They got rid of a surplus midifielder and picked up their No 1 ruckman. Great trade.

  occo said:

yeah i disagree. Mark Williams was quick...real quick. He also was able to read the play excepionally well. He had good communication with the midfield and knew when to lead so he could exploit his speed. If u watch any games again of him you will see he never lead to a cluttered area or where defenders could intercept. Delivering the ball into the forward line is the hard bit of scoring i believe. If u have a good enough midfield who can kick long when needed or silky players kicking low raking kicks it makes it easy for forwards and the midfield too as the ball doesent escape and rebound. I dont think teams just match up on goal scoring ability. THere is height issues, speed, kicking accuracy, knowing when, where and how to lead and using the space to the best of the teams ability. Green is a good kick - years ago i would have said a fantastic kick but he has dropped off alot. I would like to see Green at forward pocket as i think robbo is best at half forward pocket still. But neitz has to play FF. Last year in 1 game we had: Neitz, Robbo, Green, Bate, Dunn and davey in the forward line and it didnt work as the ball hit the ground, players were not communicating and the ball was rebounding. there is plenty of goal scoring ability there but we struggled all day

the idea of Green at full forward wouldnt come into effect until 2009. until or unless someone claims the position as their own. there are endless possibilities

MCLEAN : Is our most important player will get tagged every week he must be able to break the tag or we will have an ordinary year again.

JONES : Needs to take the pressure off McLean and become a gun midfielder.

SYLVIA : The time must be now for Sylvia if he doesn't improve dramatically then he should be shown the door like Johnstone.

We also must find a tagger to help out McDonald. Bartram looks unlikely due to his knee problems. Bode showed something at Sandy as a tagger at the end of the year he has plenty of pace and a bit of mongrel in him but his endurence may be a problem. I would like to see Bell moved into the midfield as a stopper has been around long enough to step up into a midfield role and is quick and hard at it. I see Dunn tagging the outside running players like Embley, Goodes and Johnstone.

After reading all the profiles of our our first year players I think Woneamirri looks like he can make the biggest immediate impact. Even though he was picked up very late I think history shows that players from the NT usually get over looked like the Davey's, Whelan and Stokes unless they get recruited to a private school like Rioli and his form at Norwood was very good the combination of Davey and Aussie will get me very excited and with Bartram's problems he has a chance to make an impact sooner rather than later. Bring on the NAB cup.

  occo said:

Im relying on 22 players every week. we will never win a flag if 22 players dont pull their bit

defently its a team sport not a individual sport how are ya expect to win if the other 21 players don't put in

if they think they don't have to sadly there mistaken if they try it for once they might see that it works if they all put in

I'm sorry, but if Adam Yze and Brad Green are our standouts for 2008, then we'll probably be having a terrible year. Our standouts should include McLean, Rivers, Jones and Davey, not 2 overhyped, overrated utilities that should have been traded years ago.

My 3 to stand out in 2008 are:

1. Mclean

2. Jones

3. Rivers