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I pay my membership in monthly instalments, I demand to know what our list strategy is.

This is what baffles me. Why can’t supporters support a new player unless and until he gives them a reason not to? The ink’s barely dry and “fans” have Tom sitting in the stands watching on, or a piece of the furniture at Casey. It’s mind-boggling.

Why? I don't want the club showing their hand. Downright dumb. 'Hey, rest of league, here's our plan for next year.' Why do some supporters think the club owes them a response at every turn? And don't give me the 'I'm a paid up member' claptrap. It's dumb. And the club should STFU and get on with trying to win premierships, not spend their time placating neggy nuffies who [censored] the bed every time something doesn't go perfectly.

2 drafts since the 21 flag, which trade deals have improved our list? 2021- Dunstan x 5 games retired 2022- Grundy gone, Schache x 2 games , Hunter only player getting a regular game… How has our list improved comparing this to Collingwood & Brisbane??

He didn’t lose his spot. He copped a medium term injury in round 6. He returned to the side in round 17-23 when the Crows were in the thick of a finals spot. He missed round 24 due to a cheekbone injury.

You may be right, but here's a more complete picture that includes young players who seem to have a future 21 Jacob van Rooyen Blake Howes Taj Woewodin 22 Jud McVee Andy Moniz-Wakefield Mathew Jefferson Jed Adams

He’s gone at 68% in front of goal since 2021. Given inaccuracy was the number 1 reason Melbourne went out in straight sets, then yes, I’d say he is worth pursuing at the appropriate price.

This guy is a cheap option who can play key forward and score and assist in the ruck. That’s what we were seeking. Good luck Tom.

God no. Riv will be one of our best soon enough

Which is genuinely the worst rule in the afl. Who cares if they can't pay 92% of the cap. Their players are no good. They shouldnt be paid that much.

I think WC would (should) be more concerned with getting 2 picks within the upper echelon of the draft, which seems to extend to around pick 12 (and not as far as our previously held pick 14). No point getting another 3 picks that are technically first rounders if you judge the players likely to be available in that bracket as being of inferior quality. Assuming all clubs rate players and the draft as a whole relatively similarly, that would mean a team like Geelong or Adelaide would be very unlikely to split their early-ish picks unless they are getting future picks in return. North would be able to provide 2 picks in that bracket, but based on what they already have, they’d have to split 2 or 3, which I very much doubt they’ll do. And I don’t think pick 1 is worth even close to 2 & 3. Box seat. If WC trade pick 1 it’ll end up with us for 6, 11, F1, and I reckon with another later pick (58?) coming back our way (that they probably wouldn’t use anyway). Which will pull back into around 50 after points picks have been consumed.

Can you point me to an example of a club ever commenting on list strategy in the way that you mean? Sure, there are generic examples like "we really needed to boost or tall defender stocks and we think X will add depth in that area" or perhaps "we would have loved to have kept X at our club and offered him a contract but salary cap means we couldn't offer what he wanted" or "we have built a war chest for next year" (from a bottom side). But anything about overall list or cap strategy?

I never liked the Grundy deal but it was a roll of the dice with little else available and it hasn’t cost much. Otherwise the plan seems to be to focus on 2 quality draft picks and to save cap space. The biggest cost so far is that Oliver has gone from a prized asset to a major concern and Petty has gone from a huge part of the future to someone who’d seemingly rather be in Adelaide sooner rather than later. A couple of pretty big disasters we’ve managed to find ourselves in there. I’d like the club to make some kind of comment on the list strategy once the trade period is done. Are we banking cap or are we just paying the bill for past performance? And I wish it was possible to ask them why they haven’t been more aggressive with list turnover at the back end of the list.

Account hacked by Werridee?

Schache and Dunstan were never more than depth. Look at the price paid. Grundy rucked alone, while Max was injured and it was more Max who failed than Grundy. Grundy was meant to ruck more with Max forward and because Max couldn’t play forward, they wanted Grundy to. That wasn’t the intent of getting him. We got back what we paid, it was 1 year and we move on. Plenty of clubs bring in players who don’t consistently make their side. Often they are depth players. We certainly have had recent success trading which led to a flag, getting Langdon, May, Lever, BBB, Hibberd and Melksham as examples. Likewise not every draftee will be successful. It is par for the course, hits and misses. The big hope is that the misses aren’t expensive.

Honestly, I loved what Steven May said, and as a supporter it felt great. He could've qualified it by saying "We really let ourselves down with our kicking so didn't perform well enough to win BUT I think we are better than Collingwood on our day" or something, but he was a few drinks in. That kind of personality from players is fantastic and helps build the contest! But list strategy? No chance anything real gets discussed external to inner sanctum.

Aimee Mackin giving a little show of her ridiculous skill and strength. 2 assists in 2 minutes 4th ever game of footy. just ridiculous

Shelley heath is as competitive as they come. Hard at it. Always.

Bannan is a phenom. Searing pace. Such a weapon.

From the start of trade period. Tim Lamb showing good restraint with a reporter asking him why they think Fullarton will be different than Grundy. Around 7min mark. Other random tid bits in the video that are old news now and prior to most of the club meetings.

Interesting take from Craig O' Donoghue in the West today following the Brockman trade: https://thewest.com.au/sport/afl/craig-odonoghue-west-coast-eagles-will-be-chasing-more-picks-after-giving-two-away-for-tyler-brockman-c-12203711 "As it stands, they have selections 1, 23, 37 and 58 in a draft where just over 50 players are tipped to be chosen. When you add Academy and father-son selections to the draft, picks 23 and beyond will fall down the table. Which means splitting picks must be high on West Coast’s agenda." The Eagles are projecting to take 4 picks in the draft this year. In a shallow pool, they'd probably be hoping that they don't need to use 58. Their 2nd pick at 23 will likely be in the vicinity of pick 28 by the time academy & FS bidding is done.

5 goal bannan the star of the show 4 points and plenty of percentage (could have been more but no need to be greedy). eagles very weak opposition. 2 scores in a game (one of which was gifted) is dreadful. Too many mismatches in AFLW. big game against north next Saturday night. Will be a much tougher assignment than today. go dees

Go dees

If you ever want an example of the media BS that is spouted. Fox Sports headline about Hawks landing a “star”. The star is Chol who struggled to make the Suns side. Really, Chol a star?

Was he ever juvenated?

Let’s hold a referendum

This season is way too short. I would very much like to see what Aimee Mackin could do by Round 22.

I reckon you could write it yourself: "We think our current list is really well placed to continue to challenge over the next few years and our aim is to make it better with top end talent. Even though Grundy and Gawn didn't work this year, we were confident it would've worked with a bit more time, but we respect Brodie's decision to want to be the No. 1 ruck elsewhere so we facilitated his trade. We needed to replace Grundy and we're confident that Fullerton is ready to take that next step up this year and can't wait to see him out there working with Max. One area we wanted to improve was our forward line efficiency which is why we targeted McAdam who is an elite shot for goal. We have a few kids who we expect to challenge for senior games next year (maybe name Laurie, Howes?) and wanted to add some more elite talent. We traded up because we thought that the players in the top X of the draft were high talent, but even still we were excited when Y was available at draft pick Z because we had him going much higher than that. He has elite Z talent. There'll be no pressure on Y to play next year but if he has a good preseason we might see him in the seniors throughout the year." I'm sure that over the next 2 months there will be a bunch of interviews with those kind of statements and you can piece together your own cliche post to rival mine.

This is more like it. Alyssa Bannan is clearly biologically superior to the rest of us mere mortals.

Who are they going to pay with the money? https://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/tp-west-coast-eagles Naitanui, Shuey and Hurn all just retired along with a heap of delists: https://www.afl.com.au/trade/list-changes The main salary cap issue WC will have in 2024 is paying the AFL minimum.

And what will it do? Make you feel better? How will it help the Melbourne Football Club?

Top 6. End thread/ I will have a look around and see what other threads I can close off.

I don't disagree entirely, however, Collingwood were gifted the best player in the draft via F/S during that time, Bobby Hill was seen as inconsistent and had never really got going. Had a good season and a superb finals campaign. McStay is just a goer and didn't even play in the GF, and struggled to get on the park this year, managing 14 of 26 games. There's no reason McAdam can't have an impact as big as either of Hill or McStay. As for the Lions, they too were handed one of the best players in the draft via F/S and landed Dunkley who no doubt improved their midfield. But again, there's no reason whoever we take with our first pick this draft couldn't equally improve us structurally, like Dunkley has for Brisbane.

Melksham replacement. We don’t have many natural forwards - he is one of those.

He'll surprise. Never underestimate the lure of wanting to prove others wrong. On that basis alone, I'm happy to back the kid in.

Dunno about Tom, but I know some Demonlanders have a lot of C in them. 😏

I think others may have pointed some version or this out previously, but WC are now very unlikely to trade pick 1 until the day of the draft, if they are to do it. To elaborate- they will allow themselves enough time to feel like they have a clear understanding of how they expect the early picks to play out, i.e. if they really are hellbent on acquiring Curtin, doing their due diligence to reach a level of certainty that he will still be available at pick 6 before they pull the trigger. They’d be mad to make a deal before this. There’ll obviously be a bit of faith required to believe their preferred targets are still available, but they gain no benefit by moving quickly.

With the AFLW team win over WCE, the Demons remain top of the McLelland Trophy, clear of Brisbane by 4pts. There are 3 more AFLW games to go, and if Mel and Bne keep winning in rds 8 and 9, the final round between the two teams will decide the $1m. I can't seem to find a ladder anywhere though - I've just calculated in my head.

Our last 4 or 5 games against them we've had 'all duck, no dinner' (Langdon); 'see you in two weeks' (Mcrae); football action (Maynard); and now we have May's we're better than them. There's definitely a fierce rivalry building. That said, I'd much prefer our players letting the football do the talking. May has to back that up now.

It's part of the CBA, basically the players are promised X million as part of the deal so the club's must pay the floor. It's partially because clubs like Footscray and North and possibly us were deliberately underpaying in the 90s and early 2000s to try to manage club finances. Personally I think there are better ways to manage it: - instead of clubs getting as large a dividend, all wages are paid by the AFL directly not by the club's, so the club's don't "save" by paying less than the cap (clubs can still pay what the play is worth, but they aren't incentivise to underpay) - clubs can pay down to a threshold (say 92.5%) but below that all unpaid salaries go back to the AFL. That money is distributed to the players at the end of season in accordance with a formula (bonus on match payments for every player? split equally amongst every player on a list? Split proportional to actual payments? Split only to the bottom 40% of players league wide?) I actually think the 92.5% rule makes it harder to attract FAs for lower clubs. Because you think "WCE/North or in the day us have a [censored] team so must have lots of money available for FA" but in reality they don't, they have max ~700k (the cap was $13,540,000 for the 2022 season, with a salary floor of $12,863,000).

shelley heath is as tough as they come

Yeah Aimee!!!!

Worse than that. Umpire waited for ages and then blew play on. You can see him blow whistle and hear it for play on. Gillard takes one step forward and he penalises her. Disgraceful. He knew he he called play on and then penalises for a pathetic 50 and goal. One of the worst decisions you will see.

I’d say that’d be Rhi Watt.

I’m pretty sure after 2019 at one of those member forums things Mahoney gave some details. Otherwise I’m not asking for much more than generic statements, I’d just like a rough outline of where they are at. I’ll take cliches over nothing. Well, I am a paid up member. And list strategy is now a key part of future success, what’s so wrong with lifting the curtain a little bit? After the draft we often get more insight from Demonland Podcast interview with Jason Taylor than we ever get from any formal media he does. In the US sports the GMs will do a proper press conference after the end of the year, free agency, draft etc. The AFL media go mad for trade details and Lamb responds about certain deals but what’s ever said about the bigger picture? Even if it’s just generic; ‘we like our kids, the draft was a priority for x reason, we explored key forwards but think our existing group has upside, our cap is in a healthy place’ Teams around the league know who has cash and which players are available. If we were keen on Ben King for instance it’s not going to be a surprise.

Not entirely convinced of Goody doing alright. At least not his selections in the finals. Laurie was a huge mistake and Tmac a second chance after the Prelim wasn't a good call for me. And ultimately as head coach our lack of kicking goals skills falls upon his shoulders. Not like it's a new problem either. After losing on straight sets last year, I would have thought Goody might have been more careful with finals selections but nup. I don't think I'm being harsh. I think he's done a great job overall but I'm just saying I think he dropped the ball this year.

No.

Yes, I'd rather recruit this Darling