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Hey guys, One of my first training reports so be nice Feel free to ask me any questions. - Oliver ran around the boundary the whole time. Looked fine, just needs fitness. - Lever ran around the boundary too. Looks much bigger in the upper body which was nice to see. Has obviously been hitting the weights hard. - Steven May. Wow. Easily the best trainer today. Is probably the best kick in our team and was looking very comfortable in front of goal too when having set shots for about 15 minutes. He could definitely go forward in games. Bedford tried to dance on May in a drill and May went straight at him and took him to the ground. Got a bit of an applause from the players and a laugh from the coaches. A good lesson for Bedford. This is AFL. May also lifted Nibbler up off the ground rugby style and almost flipped him over completely but he landed okay and continued. You could hear 'well done Stevie' throughout a lot of the training sessions. - Petracca ran around the boundary and he definitely still has the Petracca plod and could definitely strip weight off. - Harmes was running around the boundary and looking in great physical nick. He has dropped weight and is so thin around his waist now. - Sparrow is a good kick and hit a lot of 30m targets comfortably. I liked what I saw. - James Jordon seems to lack a bit of pace but if he can find his feet at afl level, I think it will be half back. Composed and a good user. Also pinged one from 55m off 1 step in between drills. - Preuss trained very well. His kicking is very good from what I saw. barely missed a target. - I can actually see why bedford slid to the 70's in the draft. he is quick and he has tricks but his kicking needs work. I think he will be quite shaky in front of goals. - Kade Chandler was the pick of the draftees today. He plays with intensity and is quick across the field. He could develop into a decent player. Has a bit of Ben Kennedy about him. LOL. And whilst Kennedy wasn't up to AFL standard that doesn't mean Chandler can't. A nuggety small forward left footer with intensity. - I wouldn't be holding my breath of Austin Bradtke making it. I don't want to go too early but he seemed way off the pace. In terms of physicality and skill. Even in training he seemed out of his depth. - After training finished, the draftees were forced to do a bunch (maybe 4 or 5) 300m run throughs as full pace. James Jordon was the pick of the bunch there. He tired in the last couple but he was clearly the best of the lot at these distances. nietschke performed well too.

Tom Sparrow Tom Sparrow Austin Bradtke James Jordon Aaron Neitschke Toby Bedford Kade Chandler Kade Kolodjashnij Braydon Preuss

Seems like a punishment for the rest of us.

Only a short session today. The full squad is back next week. Enjoy. https://www.smugmug.com/frame/slideshow?key=SJK3N4&autoStart=1&captions=0&navigation=1&playButton=1&randomize=0&speed=2&transition=fade&transitionSpeed=2&clickable=1 Mobile==> https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-cgfmZz?mobile=true

Only a short session today. The full squad is back next week. Enjoy https://www.smugmug.com/frame/slideshow?key=SJK3N4&autoStart=1&captions=0&navigation=1&playButton=1&randomize=0&speed=2&transition=fade&transitionSpeed=2&clickable=1 Mobile==> https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-cgfmZz?mobile=true

Please do post it, I am sure that this one picture will be more than enough to change DrDee’s mind, surely your pic will provide him with more evidence than what he would get from watching live training for over an hour.

Great training report Dr D and much respect for paying up. In the spirit of moving forward and a new season i say your debt has been paid. in full. feel free to change to the avatar of your choice. In any case that avatar is starting to freak me out a bit. I had a crazy thought of a mark neeld training report on DL. It would commence with something like; 'That new bloke, can't remember his name, is a spud. And i told him so. He better man up. Or he can @####@@ off. I don't care if we gave up pick 7 for him. And if i catch Harmes posting pictures himself riding a unicorn again i'm going to force him to sit though an edited highlights package of my pre game pep talks'

I appreciate Saty's reports of training. I don't always agree with what he says but he fronts up and gives us his thoughts and descriptions of training. He (correctly) called out a poor comment from Dr D (whose report I also appreciated) that Bradtke won't make it .... based on a November training, which is an immensely premature call to make on the least developed player on our list. That's fine and both posters are entitled to their opinions. Both acted very respectfully. But the posters coming in afterwards are a waste of space. Posters complaining that their posts will be deleted .... they bloody well should. Small minded bullies. Posters ganging up to bully Saty are just pathetic.

Which is now where he belongs...unless he lets you alter your avatar to save the rest of us from cringing every time we read one of your posts.

it was a bet I lost with a fellow poster. I've got to keep it all pre-season.

One amusing bit at training, amused Josh Mahoney, Matty Whelan and Nev Jetta and myself, couple of players, Toby Bedford and Nibbler tried to step Steven May, he buried both of them in tackles, obviously missed his highlights video

One time many years ago, @Satyriconhome made mention that Mark Neeld 'finally' had the right players at his disposal for us to play the was he wanted us to. Many others disagreed. Since then, he has said many, many other silly things. Things that have proved to me that his knowledge and attention to detail in all areas of this game is simply not there and that beneath all of this, he is really just a fierce supporter of all individuals that pull on an MFC guernsey and will defend them to the end. This is why when you hear him say, "an opinion is neither right nor wrong, it's just an opinion", you're allowed to laugh. Opinions can either hold weight, or little weight, depending on one's track record. And saty's is poor. For anyone who has doubts over a player at this time of year during the pre-season, just hold your tongue. I have no idea about how Bradtke is tracking... But I sure as hell know that if Satyriconhome's argument (against the poster suggesting that Bradtke looked out of his depth during training) was that the 'coaches didn't kick him out of a drill', then all you can do is laugh. I'm quite certain this post will be removed by the powers that be, but I'm pretty sick of Saty nitpicking an entire post due to this posters observations of Bradtke. It's quite ridiculous, it's the same every single year.

This is the obvious area of our game to improve and will take us to the next level - forward half pressure. Yes, I know we pretty much led the comp in this area, but we lack pace. If we can add more pace, we'll be able to hold the ball in even better, which will enable our dominant stoppage game to strangle teams. I'd love two Poppy and Rioli types in there, but with Petracca mostly playing forward and Spargo looking the goods, we probably only have room for one more.

Thanks for the report. On Bradtke, follow your own advice and don't go too early. These big kids need time to develop and grow into their bodies.

Stand out for me was young Kade Chandler.

How epic is it going to be to have Lever back and alongside May next season? The backline will be next level.

Sparrow look the pick of the bunch in the running drills they did at the end i.e. 2 sets of 3 by 300 sprints. Little bit of a gap to Bedford and the others. Not surprisingly, Bradtke was bringing up the tail

Newly drafted rookie Kade Chandler stood out with his strength over the ball, especially with one piece of play where he got lower than his opponent and kept the ball in his area before scooping the footy up and dishing to a teammate in traffic. The act won warm praise from Gold Coast recruit Steven May who patted his younger teammate on the back. Top draftee Tom Sparrow looked powerful and confident as he acted as a conduit between defence and attack in one drill, while James Jordon's skills by foot were impressive. Must say if these draftees come through and play anywhere near that of Oliver in his first year, it would be simply amazing. Lever back on the track too. Things are looking bloody good!

You are correct in that humans at the moment record the stats (and need to decide what is a 1%er, tap to advantage, effective kick etc). But no human decides how to weight the various stats. When you train these systems, you start with all the stats as inputs, and you know the result the model needs to give for each game (Team A won by X points). The system repeatably adjusts parameters (weights) until it gets the correct answer, and repeats that for every game in its database. What you end up with is a model that given a set of input stats will predict the result, and that is simply how the lists are ranked. I

I have a question: Can you change your avatar? Good report BTW

I swear every year the new recruits are getting bigger and bigger. Dream of the good old days when Toump and Morton got drafted and they made me feel like I could have been a footballer.

Not to mention the addition of Toby Bedford to the list. Hopefully he is up to the challenge, but he will need to impress big time over the pre-season to earn a spot back in the side. Goody doesn't have time for blokes who don't chase and get involved in games enough.

I think you're thinking of Robert Wagner, mate.

Praise the lord. This is all I wanted to see today. Great!

No Adam it is not. It is simply that my brilliant football observations are overshadowed by my even more brilliant smut.

Binman.

Great report Dr D. Appreciate it. Interesting on Chandler, same height as Spargo but has a pretty big leap and is quick. With his tackling pressure, he could surprise during the pre season. Him and Spargo could form a nice little duo.

Apparently the young recruits were put through a pretty gruelling running session?

The Eagles stats were elite when it mattered - finals. The competition is so close with no standout teams. If you make finals and perform at the right time you can walk away with the chocolates Footscray-style-2016.

So one can only comment if one attended a VFL final months ago? And a single VFL goal excuses his poor 2018 AFL season? Righto.

It’s a challenge not to go full @ProDee on your first two paragraphs, hemingway. I want to say what I think of the supporters and media who lit a bunsen burner under Goodwin in the early part of the season. I’ll just say I thought at the time, and still believe, that their opinion demonstrated hopeless impatience and a thorough lack of understanding of where we were at and what was happening. I don’t think it’s either in Goodwin’s or the club’s interest to sign any more than 3 years, on pretty good coin. He has moved out of “establishing” to “established”. That length gives him a clear signal that we’re a fan of his work and believe he’s the right man to steer the ship, without reaming ourselves if the unexpected happens and it goes south. From his perspective, it’s good certainty in an uncertain industry, with the opportunity for a big payday in 3 years time if he’s still delivering. Medium term contract should be where both the club and Goodwin are at in my opinion.

...... and Harmes, whose last third of the season was outstanding by any measurement. Unfortunately, key omissions like these make me wonder about the credibility of everything else contained in the article.

Quite a few years ago, in a little bush tavern, I shared too many beers with Big Ditta. He lamented the fact that footy had lost its "pizzaz" ie it was too regimented. About 12 months ago, I was at a boozy barbarque with a bloke who had been a trainer, stats man and general dogsbody at Casey. He claimed his most pressing job was players asking him to repeat/explain coaching instructions to him. He reckoned many players were often just plain confused about their role. Petracca has all the tools and more. He is young and played ( without looking it up) 40 - 60 games. He seems to me the sort of player who is yet to be comfortable with his role and where he fits in the team. What for him is the balance between his individuality and his part of the team. Some players don't work it out but Goody has grown on me as a coach and I reckon he'll develop Petracca into a gun who oppositions will fear.

CD just uses data and they make no assumptions. They use machine learning, specifically a convolutional neural network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network). Consider it a "brain" that has no pre-concieved assumptions but hundred of millions of ways to combine information. They just train the network on the data they have (well over 20 years of comprehensive data), putting in the stats for each game and the result. The limitation is the stats don't cover everything, as that is impossible to do, and they don't take into account things like injuries, the draw, player improvements etc. They do measure a lot though. The list is just a ranking based on this information and simply tells us in an unbiased way that we have a very very good list. As Prodee says though the premier can come out of any of the top 10 teams on that list.

I swear every year the new recruits are getting younger and younger. Maybe that's just me getting older and older. Anyone else feel the same way?

offensive? to who, you or jeffy? seems a hugely dramatic response, especially since jeffy has seemed disinterested

True, and it also highlights the fact that we see this as an area of need since our finals campaign ended. As Moonie mentioned above, Spargo battled on manfully, but having someone at the feet of our forwards who can buzz around, kick a few and put on some tackling pressure would have been super handy. Garlett can play this role but was horribly out of form, through either a lack of effort, unwillingness to work super hard for it or he was blanketed by some good defensive teams. Probably a combination of all three to be honest, although I think most would agree his efforts were pretty poor when he was in the senior side. Jeffy can still have a role to play, but he'll need to work super hard to get a chance at doing it.

Playing the man again. Garlett lost interest and compared to others in the team delivered a pea hearted effort for the second half of the season. He's lucky to still be on the list. Don't need to attend every game to see that! An experienced, creative small forward was exactly what we needed leading up to finals this year. Spargo was clearly exhausted but battled on manfully. The positive of Jeffy's MIA is the finals experience Spargo flourished in. Hopefully Jeffy turns the corner, is fit and eager to get into the 2019 season.

The 'older' guys went up Anderson Hill and the newbies did about 4 or 5 3/4 oval runs at top speed

Going to watch Tom Swallow with great interest. He has size already but with a couple of pre-seasons under the belt I feel he will be a monster. Quite impressed with our pick-up's this year. No pressure on them but in a couple of years will start to push for selection.

I would have delisted him after that GF performance, which was probably the worst performance I've ever seen from a senior player at that level. It was doubly worse because it happened in the biggest game of the year.

I've always liked their ratings. They're never wrong. I mean, they've been wrong every other year, but this year seems spot on to me.

That's not quite true. Yes they base their output on stats. ...but it's the stats they use & the assumptions made based on those stats that can be argued with. If it was pure stats then they would just release the stats sheet (the raw numbers) & let us draw our own conclusions. They don't, they give their opinion. It's not infallible & is arguable.

“With his run and endurance Sparrow will be of great value to the Demons who already have a star midfield with Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca and Nathan Jones in the middle” Unrelated but these kinds of statements intrigue me. In naming our top three midfielders they’ve managed to leave out two of the top three in Brayshaw and Viney.